This exhibition at FOTO ARSENAL WIEN showcases works from the Photo Brut collection, featuring over forty artistic processes from more than ten countries amassed by Bruno Decharme. It explores passionate, independent artistic and visual worlds created by autodidacts outside normative art understanding, focusing on themes of self-empowerment and societal norms.
FOTO ARSENAL WIEN presents "Photo I Brut . Feeling Photography – From the Bruno Decharme Collection," offering visitors a unique opportunity to engage with over forty artistic processes from more than ten countries. This extensive collection, curated by French filmmaker Bruno Decharme over four decades, delves into the realm of Photo Brut, a branch of photography deeply connected to the Art Brut movement. The exhibition highlights the passionate explorations of autodidacts who utilize photography to forge independent artistic and visual worlds, often characterized by unique inscriptions, transformative self-portraits, and intricate structural creations.
The exhibition sheds light on the lives and works of individuals with emotional or physical limitations, social outsiders, and clandestine creators who investigate new artistic issues and aesthetic approaches. These artists create works of profound aesthetic relevance, dedicated to processing feelings and experiences, independent of academic canons, social norms, or the art market. Drawing parallels to Jean Dubuffet's concept of Art Brut, "raw art" created outside established art world parameters, this exhibition emphasizes artworks produced by individuals who may not consider themselves artists. It reflects on self-empowerment and self-esteem achieved through art, and critically examines how society perceives and deals with norms and forms of mental illness. This exhibition is organized in collaboration with the Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center in Budapest and the University of Vienna.