CHARLEROI.- The Art Museum of the Hainaut Province currently presents the first major Belgian museum show of French artist Raphaël Zarka (Montpellier, 1977). The exhibition produced in collaboration with the Espai d'art contemporani de Castelló focuses on skateboarding and is being held from 2 September 2017 to 7 January 2018.
Raphaël Zarka is a singular artist who excels in sculpture, painting, drawing, photography or still, video. He is also known and recognised as one of the rare historians of skateboard, a discipline he practices since a very young age. He has published three works on the subject: Une journée sans vague. Chronologie lacunaire du skateboard 1779-2009 (2009), La Conjonction interdite (2011) and Free Ride, skateboard, mécanique galiléenne et formes simples (2011).
When he was at art school, Raphaël Zarka measured the extent to which skateboarding influenced his perception of forms and materials. He understands that his interest for typologies of forms and surface techniques meets his preoccupations as a skater who freely exploits spaces (handrails, benches, etc.) and the declivities of cities to tie them together in a course. He then realises that he traces “new courses” between forms as he maps all the apparitions of the rhombicuboctahedron (a geometric form with 26 sides, including 8 triangles and 18 squares).
In 2007, he presents the first elements of his series Riding Modern Art during the Lyon biennial. The black and white photographs drawn from skateboarding magazines represent skaters performing tricks on modern sculptures installed in the public space. The photographs underline the way skaters take over the urban space, including the most famous pieces of art history. Since then, the series has become a huge participative work to which several photographers and skaters contribute. The BPS22 is proud to present it for the first time in its complete version, including sixty photographs taken across the globe. One such piece is particularly spectacular and pays homage to Charleroi-born skater David Martelleur, who became famous after Philippe Petit’ s film, Danger Dave (2014).
Pursuing his researches on the typology of forms, Raphaël Zarka now focuses on the geometric volumes identified by German mathematician Arthur Moritz Schoenflies (18531928). He takes over module 329, a sort of U with bevelled edges, and orders several copies in corten steel before assembling these modules into various sculptures and inviting other skaters to ride his works, as though in a real skate park! With the Paving Space series, the artist encompasses his many preoccupations in one installation to create a powerful sculptural whole from a shape that he appropriated and invite skaters to take it over too. Through this dialogue between works and skaters, between museum and street, Raphaël Zarka topples over the traditional values of the art world.
For the show at the BPS22, the Large Hall of the Museum has been transformed into a giant skate park. Forty or so modules make up whole sculptures accessible to skaters. From up on the mezzanine, visitors can appreciate the sculptural strength of the assembled modules evoking a large park of modern sculpture and the virtuosity of skaters. Skate is all about style, just like art.
Curator: Pierre-Olivier Rollin
