Biography
The work of Frederic Develay is interested in a particular form of “readability” of the work, reinvesting the notions of understanding
and interpretation. For him, taking up the words attributed to Marcel Duchamp, “it is the viewers who make the table” : this drives the
viewer from the “viewing” to “reading” as a way of opening the work to individual commitments. So the words chosen by the artist are not only visual but convey meaning that always open to another dimension, to a shift, a repetition, like that mirror engraved with the term “second thoughts” that plays on the relationship between signifier/signified
object and shows the word related to it.
Marie Deparis
Frédéric Develay works mainly on writing, breaking the usual methods that distinguish the meaning from context. He creates a form of suspense to draw the viewer to participates, but also to offer him a freedom of interpretation. Although this work may reflect a rational appearance mystery can be detected which inevitably returns us to Sol LeWitt’s “Conceptual artists are more mystical rationalist. They rush to conclusions that logic can not reach ” (Sentences on Conceptual Art).
Le Regardeur, n° 13
Words are deferred levy smugglers, acting sometimes as raw material (“an insc
directions (a gray anvil, naked nude naked heavily silent on which flashes, as a bar or strip parlor sign a blue neon announcing: “lives and works.” That’s all).
Arnaud Labelle-Rojoux
In the case of Frédéric Develay, this is a strategy to “postpone” the meaning and determination of the tautology of conceptual art.
This strategy involves the use of means and materials whose subtle treatment leads to an almost illegible reading and language, as can be
seen through the example of the work entitled “Fatigue du papier n° 55” for which a listing of 37 signs is cut from a panel of black foam, itself
placed inside a carton.
Hou Hanru, Evelyne Jouanno
