As E² Gallery also points out, Sam Rictus gives his drawings the appearance of an encrypted image, forbidden to the uninitiated.
Born in 1980 in Alençon, Sam Rictus has been drawing comics and horror stories since he started out. He enrolled at the Beaux-Arts in Le Mans in 2001 and spent three years there. He was more interested in applied arts, design, and architecture. These years gave him the opportunity to travel and visit places such as the studio of Joep Van Lieshout in Rotterdam. It was also during this time that he formed “Rictus” with one of his friends. Together, they drew large-format, highly detailed images of monumental characters, somewhere between futuristic machines and Gothic architecture. They exhibited little, but produced editions for themselves. In 2005, he discovered screen printing at Pakito Bolino’s Dernier Cri. He painted the mural in his studio in Marseille in May 2007.
His comic book-inspired drawings feature monsters and cyborgs in dense, grandiose black-and-white compositions. Sam Rictus’s universe is dystopian yet grotesque, borrowing from popular culture and mythology in an ancestral process where the imagination of monsters is constantly reactivated, right up to modern creations in manga, video games, and role-playing games. The composition is organic and psychedelic: monsters and landscapes are intertwined in the same hard and liquid matter, where architecture combines with creatures. The artist gives his drawings the appearance of an encrypted image, forbidden to the uninitiated. His graphic style is influenced by the popular culture of the 80s and 90s, metal bands, and album covers by Magma (“Attahk”) and Motorhead (“Orgasmatron”), which captured his imagination from an early age.
➽ facebook.com/Sam-Rictus
➽ instagram.com/samrictus
JURICTUS + SAMRICTUS BLASPHEMAGUS
32 Pages Sérigraphiées / CVR Papier Noir 320 Gr.
Intérieur Ivory 300 Gr. Fedrigoni / 150 Extra
Jurictus was born in 1981 and lives and works in Alençon. He has lived in Marseille, where he was involved in the underground scene in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, exclusively at Le Dernier Cri. His artistic universe is inspired by Black Metal, with large, monstrous figures based on veiny drawings with multiple spikes and peaks filled with convoluted organs. His images are part of a search for form, with highly detailed arborescent patterns where the eye can get lost in the complexity of the detail. An incantatory drawing that brings forth monsters, chimeras, and a whole universe in which one evolves with patience and determination. Jurictus shows a tormented vision, a permanent chaos where light and hope can spring forth through the gentle and naive appearance of little men and joyful, smiling animals.
➽ facebook.com/jurictus.necatombe
➽ instagram.com/jurictus
“Art continues to pursue its emancipation, and graphic novels continue their metamorphosis by freeing themselves from constraints: constraints of form, format, codes, narration, storytelling, commercial constraints, printing constraints, constraints of expression, drawing, and representation. From an underground perspective, comics published by major publishers are mired in academicism, with narratives and styles that copy each other. What is marginal today will one day be mainstream. A utopia? Or an already well-established movement that is profoundly changing the way artists can invest themselves in books.” –Gabriel Delmas
SPECIAL DELMAS x JURICTUS INTERVIEW
Conducted by email in October-November 2019 for DU9.ORG
JURICTUS MAD DRAKER
2 COLOR SICKSCREEN POSTER
70-100 CM / 40 COPIES / Paper Fedrigoni 300 gr
lederniercri.org
GRAFIK PURIFICATION SINCE 1993
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