Jacques Rouby was born in Gourdon (Lot) in 1953 and died in January 2019 in Souillac, the town where he lived and worked. He first devoted himself to drawing, became a caricaturist for a time in Paris in 1981-1982 (Beaubourg), then stayed regularly in Collioure where his vocation as a painter was awakened. Settled permanently in Souillac in 1997, he indulges in all kinds of experiments starting from the elements of his work that can go as far as the destruction of it. In 2007, his studio suffered significant water damage and all his work, representing 30 years of work, almost disappeared. Some of them were saved thanks to the mobilization of his friends, including Jean-Pierre Pouzol, poet and publisher of the “Noeud des Miroirs”, who published a Manifesto for this occasion. A large number of the sculpted cartoons were then stored at his brother Michel’s home in Cahors, who kept them until 2012. 

That same year, Jacques Rouby contacted the Galerie La Ralentie, which from then on represented him in Paris.

He leaves behind him an important body of work. Not inclined to show his work, he nevertheless participated in several exhibitions.

SOLO SHOWS :

2025 ; Outsider Paris, Bastille Design Art Center (Galerie Claire Corcia)

2025 : Galerie Claire Corcia, Paris

2025 : Galerie La Ralentie, Paris

2025 : Beffroi de Souillac

2012-2019 : Galerie La Ralentie, Paris

2008 : « Palimpsestes », Abbaye de Beaulieu en Rouergue

Two sculpted cardboards enter the Abbaye’s collection, created by Geneviève Bonnefoi and Pierre Brache

2003 : « Chrysalides » Installation à la Médiathèque de Cahors

2002 : « Boucherie » Installation in situ, Souillac

1998 : « Photo-graphismes », La Chanterie, Cahors

             Salle Saint-Martin, Souillac

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 and to the concept invented by Jankélévitch of disappearing appearance. Hence Jacques Rouby’s declared fascination for the ghostly character of Ophelia or for the figure of Verlaine, the flamboyant poet, at the twilight of his life.”

                                                                                                                                                                             Xavier Bureau

GROUP EXHIBITIONS :

2023 : Biennale Hors Normes, Lyon

2003 : Diagonale des arts, Cahors avec son frère Michel Rouby, Prix de la Caisse d’Epargne

           Carennac, 25 sculpteurs

2002 : Exposition à l’Atelier de Lauranne

           « Décollages » avec Jean-Pierre Pouzol

1999 : « Photos » Printemps off de Cahors

             Festival de Jazz, Souillac

             Salon international des arts, Souillac, Prix de la ville

1994 : « Art et déchirures », Biennale de Rouen