Raphaëlle Ricol

Raphaëlle Ricol. Vers ta Terre, Paris, Éditions Lord Byron, 2024

1st edition
Edition of 250 copies
Hardcover, 22 x 28 cm, 96 pages
French English edition
Translated in English by John Barrett
ISBN : 978-2-491901-91-2

The catalog Raphaëlle Ricol. Vers ta Terre documents the artist's solo exhibition at the Galerie municipale Julio Gonzalez in Arcueil, which runs from January 10 to March 15, 2025. The text is by Richard Leydier. It was produced with the support of Arcueil town council.

Born in Lyon in 1973, Raphaëlle Ricol lives and works in Paris and Tours. She first studied graphic design, then practiced photography, before embarking on a career as a self-taught painter in 2001. Her sources of inspiration are manifold: comics, manga, cartoons, urban art, classical painting, not forgetting the world around her. She has been the subject of group exhibitions at the Conciergerie in Paris, “A triple tour : Collection Pinault”, at the Abbaye d'Auberive (2013), at Lieu Unique in Nantes (2012), at the Fondation Salomon (2010) and was one of the emerging artists selected for the ‘Dynasty’ exhibition at the Musée d'art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and the Palais de Tokyo in 2010. She is also the winner of the fourth edition of the Prix Jean-François Prat (2015).

“Towards your Earth. The title is like a battle cry. But which battle should we wage? The palette for reading and viewing is plural. Painting has taken root in us since the advent of our environment: Nature, Earth, Air, Water, Fire... Before painting, I forget myself as “dead to self” (St. Paul's letter). When I start painting, people and things happen. Either accidental or essential. It's as if it gradually takes on a whole life. Without return. If art is separated from everyday life, it becomes uprooted. That's why the works don't have subtitles, but intentions that reflect necessity. A colorful, brutal cocktail of black humor bordering on cynicism, admiration for Nature's power in the face of the sometimes belligerent human, alienated by paradox (Raphaëlle Ricol, July 2024).

Richard Leydier is an exhibition curator, art critic, former editor-in-chief of Art Press magazine and editor-in-chief of AVC magazine. In this capacity, he has written a large number of monographs on artists as diverse as David Altmejd, Bernhard Martin, Georg Baselitz, Vanessa Beecroft and Ernesto Neto. He is the author of several books on Ronan Barrot, Marc Desgrandchamps, Jean Messagier, Jonathan Meese and François Rouan, among others.