Gérard Rancinan a Caroline Gaudriault in Danubiana Gallery

The authors have chosen the museum in Bratislava, Slovakia, in the heart of Europe, to exhibit their work “Democratia” for the very first time. The exhibition focuses on several democratic forms and is underlined by a photographic fresco of 15 metres created in 2016. In fifteen steps along this work, you can see a phantasmagorical allegory of decline of power. Facing the fresco, long textual kakémonos tell a story about “a democratic murder”. The fictional dialogue between photography and writing is thus placed in the centre of the exhibition.

Other works follow this course: “Press Power” and “Paper Men” about the decline of media, “Chaos” about urban uprisings, “Dance of the Fool” and “Small Man in a Big World” about the search for freedom… A calligraphic installation is laid out on 13 metres in length and evokes the airy manner of reflexions about democracy whose exact identity we never stop searching for.

Gérard Rancinan and Caroline Gaudriault grasp a an extremely fragile notion like an equilibrium point that people always have to rethink. The authors invite us to look clearly and ask the question: if we mock democracy and it disappears one day, will people realize what they have lost?