Discover the contemporary work of Raphael Mallon

Né à Chamonix in 1974, Raphaël MALLON grew up in Saint Gervais. From childhood, he has been confronted with à practicing high mountains.

These recurring experiences fundamentally mark him in the awareness of the dangerousness of life. of this inhospitable environment, of the fragility of man in this environment and more generally, of the surreptitious nature of all life.

In this, the relationship that Raphaël Mallon maintains with the void is constitutive of his artistic approach. He works at to re-tame the void, to let yourself be left alone surprise again by the secret presence of counter-form and infinity in each of the subjects he constructs.

He took his first steps in painting in Paris. at the end of the 90s. A decisive meeting commits him to a new career. continue this path: Grégogna, multidisciplinary painter, spiritual father of the School of Séte and Free Figuration, took him under his wing and became his master.

Established in the Paris region, Raphaël Mallon joined the Salon d’Automne in Paris as a partner. the end of the 2000s.

He heads the Myths & Realities until 2015, preferring to refuse the presidency to devote himself exclusively to the development of his art.

Vice-president of the Salon de Versailles until 2019, he wants to return to a mountain environment, more conducive to his work. the form of creation that animates it. He returned to Haute-Savoie in 2020 to set up his workshop, in the heart of a small hamlet at the Col du Feu, on the heights of Lake Geneva.

Raphaël Mallon regularly exhibits at trade shows, at Paris and the Province and elsewhere abroad.

The figurative work of Raphaël Mallon is mû by what is at stake beyond; appearances. Each painting depicts Man, in his relationship to nature. the other, at nature, itself, and the spaces that bring them together. It will be formed if there is empty. It will be alive if there is damage. It is according to these principles that he approaches forms and counter-forms which punctuate his work.

Initially integrated into the Outsider Art movement, the works of Raphaël Mallon are part of the lineage of figurative painting. Influenced first by the ancient masters in terms of dramaturgy (Gréco) and the exploration of chiaroscuro (Caravaggio), then by the moderns in terms of the development of matter (Fautrier) and color (Chagall), finally by contemporaries at the same time. through the quest for the Universal (Garouste). The common thread is to always push further the search for the tipping point, the limit of equilibrium.

After a charcoal sketch, the work in charcoal is completed. the oil on canvas begins. Several sessions are necessary to redefine, glazing after glazing, the distances and relationships between these objects and the voida priori unoccupied, yet a condition of life, organized by nature. s thanks to a restricted color palette, resolutely oriented by the essence of chiaroscuro. the work, the viewer is guided between the hollow spaces, confronted with à his own solitudes, towards the emergence of his intimate emotions.