"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

Xavier Robel is an artist and graphic designer based in Geneva, Switzerland. He is the co-founder of Elvis Studio, with Helge Reumann, which brought together their collaborative and individual works from 1998 to 2015. Since 2009, he has designed programs, records, and posters – over 800 to date – for cave12, an experimental music venue in Geneva. He is the co-curator, with Vincent de Roguin, of the Vollandes 13 exhibition space and has published numerous books of his drawings (most recently with Miami and Tsar Books). Some of his latest activities include contributions to the Parisian magazine Lagon and a composition for synthesized piano based on La Monte Young's The Well-Tuned Piano tuning system, to be released on LP by Poly Dance Theatre Records in 2025.