Born in 1964, Christophe Ronel lives and works between Rouen and Paris. Over a hundred personal exhibitions have been dedicated to him, including several in museums in France and abroad.
Between very personal mythologies, anecdotes of streets and details accumulated first in his many sketchbooks that never leave him, Christophe Ronel has invented a "syncretic figuration" where animals, mythical ancestors, occupy a place of choice, regularly playing the role of humans like in fables and tales.
Each work presents itself as a teeming little theater where the details offer reversible and interchangeable readings.
Ronel gladly plays with humor and derision: his embarkations, his wandering carts, his processions and his masquerades evoke peoples on the move, worlds of impermanence shaped by migrations, crossings and crossbreeds.
If Ronel likes to depict this little people half observed, half fantastic, heir to Bosch and Ensor, these are the cities that have received his most attention in recent years. Its villages, megalopolises and other "Babeldorado" occupy a prominent place in its territories: incessant crossings between habitats of land in the Maghreb and West Africa, between architectural accumulations of Benares, slums of Mexico, American vertical cities and Chinese or lacustrine cities of Vietnam or Burma, its "invisible cities" are woven with references, a veritable organic "melting pot" and teeming with its protean approach.