Raphaël Zarka was born in Montpelier in 1977, and based in Paris, he belongs to a generation of young artists who use found forms as the raw material of their work.
And while the starting point of his work is basically sculptural, he is particularly concerned with art in public spaces and the challenge they pose for artists, rooted in his abiding fascination from a very young age with skateboarding and the whole culture around it. In fact, he has developed this interest in various essays on the history of skateboarding, and on its topography and strategies, and how the experience of skating in different urban sculptures and public areas redefines these places. As such, the artist approaches the practice of skateboarding as a kind of rewriting of spaces conceived for a particular use, to then transfer them to his artistic practice. In this way, he reiterates the same practice that had previously fuelled his interest in abandoned sculptural constructions in order to give them new uses.
By using the concept of “documentary sculptures” with regards his practice, Zarka underscores his desire to voluntarily work with pre-existing forms, which are discovered more than invented. Akin to an archaeologist digging up an object, the artist is concerned not only with what he has found, but also where and how it was found and the history behind it, and he renders his theoretical approach indistinctly across photography, video, sculpture and drawing.
While Zarka’s rethinking of skateboarding is sustained on an ecology of critical and contemporary artistic creation, his interest in reutilisation defines the rendering of his “skateable” sculptures, designed on the basis of scientific objects by the mathematician Arthur Schönflies (1853-1928), little geometrical elements that fit together without leaving empty spaces. Zarka designed these modules by amplifying them to the scale of urban fixtures and thus enabling them to be used by skaters. These corten steel forms, whose angles and planes are perfects for skateboarding, are sculptures in their own right. In consequence, skaters have to adapt to Zarka’s sculptures in the same way as they co-opt the objects they find in the public space, with the scale of the modules being based on the benches used by skaters.
And while the starting point of his work is basically sculptural, he is particularly concerned with art in public spaces and the challenge they pose for artists, rooted in his abiding fascination from a very young age with skateboarding and the whole culture around it. In fact, he has developed this interest in various essays on the history of skateboarding, and on its topography and strategies, and how the experience of skating in different urban sculptures and public areas redefines these places. As such, the artist approaches the practice of skateboarding as a kind of rewriting of spaces conceived for a particular use, to then transfer them to his artistic practice. In this way, he reiterates the same practice that had previously fuelled his interest in abandoned sculptural constructions in order to give them new uses.
By using the concept of “documentary sculptures” with regards his practice, Zarka underscores his desire to voluntarily work with pre-existing forms, which are discovered more than invented. Akin to an archaeologist digging up an object, the artist is concerned not only with what he has found, but also where and how it was found and the history behind it, and he renders his theoretical approach indistinctly across photography, video, sculpture and drawing.
While Zarka’s rethinking of skateboarding is sustained on an ecology of critical and contemporary artistic creation, his interest in reutilisation defines the rendering of his “skateable” sculptures, designed on the basis of scientific objects by the mathematician Arthur Schönflies (1853-1928), little geometrical elements that fit together without leaving empty spaces. Zarka designed these modules by amplifying them to the scale of urban fixtures and thus enabling them to be used by skaters. These corten steel forms, whose angles and planes are perfects for skateboarding, are sculptures in their own right. In consequence, skaters have to adapt to Zarka’s sculptures in the same way as they co-opt the objects they find in the public space, with the scale of the modules being based on the benches used by skaters.
