Raphael Zarka, l'art du skate ou skater l'art?

Raphael Zarka, the art of skateboarding or skating art?

Raphael Zarka is a French visual artist and essayist born in 1977 in Montpellier. He is known for his work in the fields of sculpture, photography and video. However, one of his passions is skateboarding .

The skater's look

Drawing on his years of skating and, above all, searching for spots to ride, he reveals in his work an interest in the relationship between skaters and their way of appropriating urban space which can be found illustrated in his series of photographs Riding Modern Art .

In his book The Forbidden Conjunction (published in 2003), Zarka describes skateboarders as "inventors capable of giving another use to a certain part of the urban fabric".

Excerpt from Riding Modern Art

The skateable sculptures

In 2016, he presented his " skateable " sculptures at Pavement Place at the Palais de Tokyo, they partly reference Roland Barthes' analysis of wooden construction games ( Mythologies , published in 1957), Raphaël Zarka compares skateboarding to “an involvement in the creation of forms, meanings and uses for elements which have none”.

Excerpt from Pavement Place

A skateboarding story

His publications such as Chronologie lacunaire du skateboard (published in 2009) or Une Jour sans vague (published in 2006) and his interest in the history and culture of skateboarding make Raphaël Zarka one of the rare historians in this field, don't miss his works!

Back to blog