RAPHAËL BATTOIA - France

CONTACTS: raphael@battoia.info WEBSITE www.raphael.battoia.info

Studio: 1 Boulevard Jean Jaures 77170 Brie Comte Robert France Tel +33625578126

Venice on the blue boat

Flooded streetlight

60 x 40 cm on canvas

3 mats and 2 boats

Bull Island

cm 90 X 30 on Dibond

cm 90 X 60 on canvas

Marquis in red

Two grandmas

cm 75 X 50 on canvas, framed with American box frame cm 80 X 56

cm 90 X 60 on canvas

About his Art

Raphaël Battoia, photographer

Self-taught, he never took a photography course, but learned the art of photography by devoting a great deal of time and endless passion to it.

For about fifteen years, with the advent of digital art, he moved from being a photographer to artistic creation, always based on photographs he took himself.

Later, through exchanges with other artists who over time became his friends—Valérie Perrier-Sarrazin, art professor and critic; Micheline Leberre, Paris Beaux-Arts graduate, accomplished draughtswoman and painter; and Edith Poinsot-Lardy, art promoter—they encouraged him to show his work. This led him, in 2013, to decide to organize a major solo exhibition at the Oberkampf gallery in Paris.

As this exhibition was very successful with both the public and critics, it strengthened him in his choice
to continue along this artistic path.

At the end of 2016 he created “les Carrocatures”, offering a new way of making caricatures using digital media.

Now, after numerous exhibitions and contacts with critics and collectors, his attention has turned abroad, and in particular to Italy, the homeland of his grandparents.

List of main solo exhibitions:

Solo exhibition at Galerie Oberkampf in Paris, June 2013

Solo exhibition Crêperie La galette capricieuse in Paris, 2016–2017

Solo exhibition, Rothschild Hospital, Paris, January 2017

Art3f exhibition, Paris Porte de Versailles, January 2017

Exhibition, Chinese Cultural Center, Aulnay-sous-Bois, France, April 2017

Solo exhibition, WeArtFromParis, Paris, March 2017

Art Shopping exhibition, Carousel du Louvre, Paris, June 2017

Virtual exhibition “Les Recombinants”, Art-O-Rama, Marseille, August 2017

SAM 2017 exhibition, Giverny, France, September 2017

Speaking about my Digital Art

For me, creating means distorting reality to make it visible.
That’s why I feel more like a creator than a photographer, even though at the core of my work there is always one of my photos.

Being in a constant search for new worlds to explore artistically has become a daily, vital need.
The starting point is always the same: an encounter.
It is this encounter that lies at the origin of my work.
Like an unexpected appointment, a wander, an object, a structure, a place, an unavoidable original situation becomes a shot, a photo.

Wandering, I have accumulated tens of thousands of photos that are my raw material, like clay for the sculptor.
In front of the computer screen, in an instant, the photo—one particular photo—almost starts speaking to me.
Its setting? Its colors? A memory? An emotion? It doesn’t matter how or why, I know it is with her that I must work. Alchemy has done its part; now my work can begin.

During my graphic work I recompose and create, wholly or partly, a new image different from its matrix.
My work unfolds in three worlds: “the classics”, “the atmospheres” and finally “the caprices.”

For certain photos, just a few retouches—framing and/or color saturation—keeping them faithful, as in my first vision.

This is what I call my “classic” universe.

“The atmospheres”, which could also be called “photo-paintings”: for these I build and “lay down” on the photographic support the “matter” that sharpens emotion, replacing brush and paint with software and a mouse.

My new series “Carrocatures”, a French neologism of glass and caricature, uses the same technique but is applied by me to people, thus becoming a modern, digital version of caricature.

For me it is each time a new discovery because the result will never be the same, nor ever known in advance.
Sometimes comic, sometimes sad, sometimes frightening—but that too is the pleasure of creation,

My third universe is what I call “the caprices”, in homage to my master Canaletto.

Trying, at my humble level, to create representations of places with improbable reality—imaginary yet figurative, dreamlike and enchanting.

But the work does not stop when I have given life and form to my creation; I need the viewer to complete the piece...
The singular gaze of each person, shaped by their life, their story and their artistic vision, creates a unique and different dialogue with the images I offer.
The story told by each of my photo-paintings multiplies with every encounter and exchange I have with viewers.

Two universes overlap, come together; this is how the work is reborn into itself as many times as eyes cross it.

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