Jacques Rouby

Untitled Jacques Rouby (1953-2019) Contemporary abstract art painted cardboard

1995

Jacques Rouby was born in Gourdon (Lot) in 1953 and passed away in January 2019 in Souillac, the town where he lived and worked. He initially dedicated himself to drawing, becoming a cartoonist in Paris for a time in 1981-1982 (Beaubourg), and then regularly stayed in Collioure where his vocation as a painter awakened.Settling permanently in Souillac in 1997, he engaged in all sorts of experiments with elements of his work, even going as far as to destroy some of it. In 2007, his workshop suffered significant water damage, and all of his work representing 30 years of labor was nearly lost. A portion was saved thanks to the efforts of his friends, including Jean-Pierre Pouzol, a poet and publisher of « Le Noeud des Miroirs, » who published a Manifesto for this occasion.A large number of sculpted cardboard pieces were then stored at his brother Michel’s place in Cahors, where they were kept until 2012. That same year, Jacques Rouby contacted the Galerie La Ralentie, which began representing him in Paris from then on. He left behind an important body of work. Although he was reluctant to show his work, he still participated in several exhibitions. Jacques ROUBY, the aesthetics of mystery « Experimental dreamer, passionate about graphic adventures, deliberately marginal, Jacques Rouby immerses himself in the abysses of floating inspiration and uncontrolled intuition. Randomness takes the stage and accidents are welcome. In an interview, Jacques Rouby speaks of "the intervention of chance, which is my master (sic)". Elsewhere he says : "something appears and I can intervene but not always… I do not calculate". Finely colored, his sculpted boards are scarred, punctuated with abrasions, scratched, scraped, scarified, riddled with bursts of staples… Craters, lava, erosion, plate sedimentation, the gaze is projected onto unusual topographies, suggesting aerial views of unknown planets, extraterrestrial deviations, or virgin lands resulting from underwater explorations. The imagination is invited to a total change of scenery… One thinks of the texturologies of Dubuffet, of his inventories of materials, non-inventoried spaces, ignored by maps, close neighbors to the turbulent infinity of Henri Michaux or his journey in Great Garabagne. Rouby lives in the way of Michaux, in an imaginary land that he also takes pleasure in creating almost without realizing it. ‘I live my art as a journey,’ he declares in an interview. ‘To make and unmake’ teaches Zen philosophy. Jacques Rouby has produced thousands of drawings, piled up in his studio and victims of sudden flooding on two occasions. The disaster was met with astonishing philosophy by the artist, who believes that the second phase of his work is destruction. This notion should be taken in the sense that Leonardo da Vinci encouraged inspiration from the stains of an old wall damaged by time. ‘A character passionately in love with incognito, art is always where it’s least expected,’ wrote Jean Dubuffet. Rouby is an artist of the infinitesimal, an infinitesimal rich in bustling life. An approach that contributes to an aesthetics of mystery. » Xavier Bureau, 2025