A 24 page photocopy zine of drawings from Xavier Robel, co-founder of Elvis Studio. From an edition of 100 numbered copies, now sold out with the publisher.

“The drawings in this zine are based on a painting I bought many years ago for 10 Swiss francs at the flea market in Geneva. Since then, it has served as a kind of disruptive guest in many of my exhibitions – sometimes as part of the show, sometimes hidden away. The only thing I knew about the painting was that it was signed R. Joly /64.

Over time, I’ve made several remakes of it. The first two of those appeared in a publication with Tsar Books back in 2021, along with some clues about a discovery related to the painting. As it turns out, a friend had come across an obituary for the cartoonist Gahan Wilson (1930–2019) that was illustrated by a selection of his drawings spanning his long career. One of them (originally published in the October 1964 issue of Playboy magazine) looked very familiar. My painting, also dating from 1964, happens to be a remake of that very cartoon.

This zine presents 24 remakes of the R. Joly /64 painting. A further one was shown in January 2025 as part of a small installation I made at Halle Nord in Geneva, accompanied by a 40,000-character-long text about the painting, written by a friend. Who “R. Joly” was, I still don’t know – at least not yet." — Xavier Robel