Raphaël Zarka

Raphaël Zarka was born in 1977 in Montpellier, France. He lives and works in Paris, France.

Raphaël Zarka graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and from the Winchester School of Art (UK). His work in the expanded field of sculpture also includes photography, drawing and writing. He is notably the author of three essays on forms and spaces of skateboarding, in which he puts forward a transversal and transdisciplinary approach to popular cultures.

Zarka's work method resembles that of a researcher or an archaeologist, he even describes his works as "documentary sculptures". He is particularly interested by the migration of certain, often marginal, geometric forms borrowed to art and ornament history, science, and technology. In appropriating these forms by way of replicas and reconstructions, he relocates them in the field of visual arts, thus updating their usage and meaning, all the while emphasizing their permanence. The artist also appeals to a modular and combinatory approach to sculpture, generating forms and structures from a given module. This technique of integrating movement into his work is even more explicit when he creates practicable works such as his iconic Paving Space series.

His work is part of many French institutions such as the Centre Pompidou, the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris, and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Strasbourg, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Val-de-Marne in Vitry as well as in six French regional contemporary art collections (FRAC) and at the Centre National des Arts Plastiques (CNAP). His works also feature in the international collections such as the ones of the Mudam in Luxembourg (MUDAM), BPS22 - Musée d'art de la Province de Hainaut, Charleroi, the Museum of New and Old Art in Hobart (MONA), Tasmania, Kadist Art Foundation, Paris/San Francisco, and the Zabludowicz collection in London, amongst others.