De Decker's work goes beyond the materialisation of a mode of thought, the manipulation thereof and the translation to an idea, a drawing or a mental structure. Works like Yellow Man or Dan Graham asleep open the door to another reality: that of the subject, which is handed over to the automatic imagination of the dream. It is this automatic imagination that De Decker alternately searches for and presents in his work. It is this kind of imagination that triggers the 'künstlerische Arbeit': be it writing, drawing, rhythmic talking, unedited film or gathering.
Memory Archive accumulates various disciplines in the form of a collection of objects: sponges, branches, pinecones, vases, shells, skulls, fluff etc. The objects are displayed in varying arrangements and gradations on tables, racks or on the ground. Of these arrangements, pictures, video-recordings, drawings and memories are collected, which can complete the presentation or can be exhibited in their own right. Although this collection may seem variegated at first sight, a more profuse investigation reveals that the objects do indeed belong to one or two categories in order to form an archive.
One can impossibly conceive just one memory of this assortment: the recollections or the course of life that can be reconstructed using the hoarded fragments and objects. Instead of such a subjective set Memory Archive represents a series of objects that are themselves a memory or accommodate it: seeds - a vessel, a vase - and branches. Furthermore each of the objects shows a resemblance to the human brain of which the vessel (skull) belongs to the collection. De Decker's Memory Archive subsists of a structure, divided in compartments, which are isomorph to their stem. Thus the work itself develops into a memory of what could have been a memory. It could contain all of the other works the artist has ever made, even the fraction recordings of the previous trial installation, which for a moment could contain information in a seemingly closed circuit and could transform this to a reflecting spectrum.
Often space hallucinatory makes its entry into the work; uncontrolled camera movements, accelerations, reflections alongside decelerations and close-ups. A snail's shell is screwed onto the fitting of a light bulb and two spirals produce an endless movement. Once in a while the absurd quality of this pseudo-scientific experiment disappears in the blow-up of the camera-positions.
For Actions of an Eye De Decker filmed his proper eye. On a television screen the recorded eye reflects in De Decker's eye, which creates an imaginary echo into infinity or at least up to where one can detect it. Only the television screen provides a blue and nocturnal light and this refers to De Decker's tale of the immense nocturnal depth, which emerges when the house, the light or human knowledge is abandoned.
Prototypically this mirroring is already contained in the hallucinatory understatement: Object to look into my own eyes.
The Object is a very simple construction of polystyrene foam and a mirror. In order to visualise the image of the opposite eye two mirrors were placed diametrically to one another. To bestow the work with a solid and scientific disposition, a measuring triangle was attached to the back of the installation as to determine the exact height of the face and commence the experiment in a quantifiably precise way.
The object arranges the eye in a similar relation to the electrical current, which still realised a visibly closed fraction circuit in the trial installation of 1995, mentioned before. In Object to look into my own eyes, the discernible result does not take the form of fractions. The object's only raison d'être is to gratify a certain curiosity for even less than a second.
Much more labour-intensive is De Decker's research of Utopia. For a so-called installation the artist built structures of cardboard boxes. The video, which registered these actions, is shown in acceleration. We see De Decker in a room while erecting man-sized constructions: a pyramid-shape, a fortress, a tour, and a house with a herringbone pattern. Later on De Decker translated these motifs to a computer screen making use of 3D software. Utopia is a means of scanning the boundaries of structures: classification, psychic automatisms, the somniferous state, impersonalisation, depersonalisation and mirror images.
In Utopia the camera replaces the eye. In a mechanical fashion it reduces the scale of the objects and blends them to one level of reality, in which various dimensions can be joined. The outlines of De Decker's body are precipitately broken down and reconstructed as pixels and square images. The speed in Utopia is increased to such an extent that the construction and deconstruction of the structures develops into a whirlwind, which is capable of blowing up the items and caving them in. With this structure we linger once again in the spheres of Alice in Wonderland. Utopia displays indeed a similar spiral development as the snail's shell and the bulb fitting of Memory Active.
Koen De Decker's work abandons Plato's cave and the objects that appear in revue. We are dealing with more than what the shady side of things conjectures. In a straightforward manner the oeuvre seems to opt for the singular direction of a 'Jenseits', in which distant dimensions are assembled while they grade into one another. Consciously De Decker limits himself to the display of the keys, which might fit such an 'outside'. He is far from the alchemist, who views a better life outside the boundaries of knowledge and the physical world. The mystery sought for in the combination of Sonic Youth and Un chien Andalou is the power of suspense, which can only leave a vague, but yet feverish and inauspicious impression similar to the subterranean resonances and echoes, which can only allow for the understanding of an inaccessible goal, while they don't permit to measure or estimate the distance.
