Jack Risto

Jacques Ristorcelli (alias Risto) studied at the National School of Fine Arts in Bourges. He lives and works in Aix-en-Provence.
Among the pioneers of artistic video in the early 1980s, he collaborates for a time with Cahiers du cinéma, then focuses on illustration, in parallel with multimedia production.

Faithful heir of pop art, of the Bazooka group, companion of American artists such as Raymond Pettibon, Robert Longo and Richard Prince, Ristorcelli draws only from existing images extracted from comic books, pulp magazines, engravings, popular images, personal photographs. He seizes the images, cuts them out, reframes them, mishandles them, redraws details, assembles them by collage, repeats them...

With these foreign images, often stereotyped, impersonal, Ristorcelli orchestrates a kind of interior theater, in turn refined, grotesque, romantic and violent. His blog is significantly entitled "Electric Paper Theater", in reference to the "kamishibai" (literally "paper theater"), this modest art of Japanese street storytellers, and to the nickname that television sets received when they appeared in Japan: "electric kamishibai".
Paper-screens, back and forth.