The breath of silence
Born in 1934 in Ardèche, Pierre Ribà is a sculptor of slow time, humble materials and inhabited silence. Between France and Spain, he has been pursuing a refined quest for decades: to express the world with little, with simplicity, with the essential.
Cardboard, the material of the soul
Where others choose marble or bronze, Ribà has found his calling in laminated cardboard — a fragile, almost insignificant material that he transforms with patience and fervour. Sheet by sheet, he cuts, assembles, glues, sands and waxes. The surface becomes skin, the form becomes breath.
Depending on the patina, the sculpture becomes white like ancient stone, black like graphite or soft like beeswax. Cardboard, preserved by resin, reveals its hidden nobility: a humble material transformed into pure poetry.
Between shadow and light
In Ribà’s work, everything rests on a subtle balance: between fullness and emptiness, between shadow and light, between figure and abstraction. His forms evoke masks, megaliths, faces or raised stones.
They do not seek to represent: they present. They stand upright, silent, almost alive.
‘My identity is that of the farmers of the Ardèche — slow men who need a lot of time to say things… with little, with simplicity.’
These words shed light on his entire body of work: sculpture that breathes, that listens to the world, that remembers the earth.
A sculpture of the essential
In his pieces, light plays like breath. Every edge, every hollow captures the passage of the day. The sculptor’s precise but discreet gesture leaves room for space.
In this silent language, we find affinities with Brâncuși, Arp, or even the art of the Cyclades — the same quest for purity, the same light gravity.
At the Galerie Mourier
To present Pierre Ribà is to invite the eye to look differently. His sculptures do not seek effect: they demand attention.
They harmonise with the slow breathing of a place, the passage of light, the peace of silence.
They embody a rare beauty: that of almost nothing becoming everything.
I’m sharing an excellent video, a MIFAC award winner.
