Sophie Dulin • setelosangeles@gmail.com • +33 6 07 90 76 30Yann Perreau • yannperreau@gmail.com • +33 6 40 97 70 73

Association Sète - Los Angeles • 12 quai de la République 34200 Sète FranceInstagram : @setelosangeles

«Sète has that unique gift of crystallizing every aspect of fairy-tale magic. In literature, a fairy-tale was often a story inhabited by supernatural beings. If this supernaturalness is in nature and stays within its realms, then magic is the perfect word for Sète. A place that polarizes liberties, free spirits and anarchists, in the etymological sense of the word.»

Michel Onfray (philosopher), «Féeries Sétoises», 2016

«When I arrived in Los Angeles, I didn’t know a soul. In New York, people told me ‘you’re crazy going over there when you don’t have a single friend and don’t drive. If you want to go the West Coast, go to San Francisco.’ My reply was ‘no, no, Los Angeles is the place for me.’»

David Hockney, «David Hockney by David Hockney», 1976

Sète has never ceased to attract and produce artists. It’s a city of artists. A pool of talent, a hotbed. Few towns can boast such a compelling identity to which artists have such a deep-rooted attachment. Some pass through, some have chosen to live there, others were born there. The first artists who come to mind are musician Georges Brassens, film director Agnès Varda and theater director Jean Vilar. Three exceptional artists, three libertarians and anti-conformists who loved a city now and forever associated with their talent. Artists from Sète are like a group of friends, yet they do not form a “school”. Whether it is free figuration, raw or conceptual art, they each explore their own path, their own singularity, domain and inspirations without any signs of a homogeneous movement. Among the painters, sculptors and/or musicians, there are those who draw their inspiration from mythology, traditions and light. They all love to travel and see the world, but always return to Sète, their home port. Known as the singular island (in Paul Valéry’s words), Sète is a port and a seaside town on the Mediterranean with its own very strong cultural identity, traditions, cuisine and dialect.

The lavish, energetic, creative and buzzing city of Los Angeles also has a vibrant artistic scene, but on a larger scale than Sète. The “City of Angels” has always been a city of artists. This huge, sprawling city at the edge of the ocean embodies the American dream. Increasingly, the city is attracting an ever greater numbers of artists, collectors, galleries and institutions, and has become the international epicenter of contemporary art.

Two hills, one on the edge of the Mediterranean, the other on the Pacific Rim, embody a creative buzz and quest for freedom. Two centers of open-air contemporary art, places where you find light, space and energy, but also an attraction to counterculture, irreverence, the blend of genres and the unusual. Two cities that will be associated, linked and confronted during the time and space of an exhibition and the encounter of two groups of artists.

THE CONCEPT

The mutual interest of the Setois for the Americans dates back to the 1960s, when Hervé Di Rosa and Robert Combas sympathized with Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kenny Scharf with whom they shared, as the art critic Otto Hahn wrote, a “joyful vitality.” The artists from Sète have never resisted LA’s magnetic appeal. From the first “cowboys” of free figuration to today’s sculptors of sound, they have constantly looked to America, narrating their stories against the backdrop of the American West, nurturing the legend of Hollywood, while inventing Californian characters and settings. They are inspired by comics, super heroes and street art, using art to tear down frontiers. However, the affinities, correspondence, and similarities between Sète and Angelino artists go beyond this “taste for America” and this non-conformist spirit. It is in fact a whole secret story, that of counter-culture, which links the two artistic scenes.

In the history of French contemporary art, Sète is an exception. At the time when Paris and its School of Fine Arts banished painting, colors and expressionism, relegating figuration to the oblivion of history and brandishing the concept as an absolute, the small rebellious city invented “free figuration”. This movement, at the antipodes of the cerebral and abstract art of the 70s, took the party, the “freedom”, to make “appear” all forms of art, without frontiers of genre and geographical origin, without hierarchy of values between high and subculture, without distinction between fine and applied arts. In addition to raw art, the pioneers of the free figuration claim their approach as that of craftsmen of the “popular arts”, inventors of monsters and robots (Hervé Di Rosa), inspired by Mickey Mouse as science fiction, African imagery and suburban culture (Robert Combas). They draw from this popular culture (what is sometimes called subculture across the Atlantic) sources of inspiration that are appreciated by everyone, far from the refined references of the “connoisseurs” of contemporary art.

A similar attitude characterizes the birth of the Angelino art scene. At the time when New York dominated with Pop Art, abstract expressionism, and then minimalism, Los Angeles was free from all these currents and ventured towards new territories, claiming the supremacy of matter over idea, know-how over abstraction. Ed Kienholz, Larry Bell, Ed Ruscha, Dennis Hopper, Barbara Kruger, these “rebels in paradise” as defined by art historian Hunter Drohojowska-Philp, proposed radically new art, a dissident creation of mainstream and Hollywood culture, made up of singular styles (finish fetichism, light and space, LA cool, etc). The two cities were to meet. The contact first passed through the curiosity of the Setois who, looking well beyond New York, became interested in Los Angeles and its counter-culture: performers, punk bands, street artists, B series, fanzines. Agnès Varda launched the movement, which began in the sixties in California, aware of the avant-garde movements that were then expressed there. After dedicating a film to the Black Panthers in Oakland, the filmmaker set off to find the murals that were then appearing in Venice Beach, South Central, and Downtown. Robert Combas was passionate about Californian punk, Hervé di Rosa sympathized with Jim Shaw, Stéphan Biascamano revisited experimental cinema and the B series of the time.

A SECRET STORY

Sète Los Angeles is an experience, a trip, an epic ride guided by a desire to organize an encounter between artists from two worlds, who develop their own approaches to art, poetry, literature, music and the cinema. We wanted to gather different perspectives and have to get to know one another and create together. We wanted to recreate a bit of Sète in Los Angeles, and vice versa, a sort of “Here is elsewhere” (as Anne-Marie Miéville and Jean-Luc Godard say in their eponymous film) - to invent a fictional territory where these two universes coexist.

Organisers Sète Los Angeles is a non-profit association charity whose objective is to cross these two cities and then other cultural epicenters: Berlin, Shanghai, Moscow, and Tokyo. This collective and family project was born during a meeting in front of the Halles de Sète in April 2017. The idea, formulated by Vanessa Atlan a Setoise visual artist who moved to Los Angeles in 2010, was then explored and developed by Sophie, Pauline, Marie and Anne, Setoises of births or of heart, passionate about art. The idea was then proposed to a selection of artists who immediately accepted the collective artistic adventure. The selected artists have been chosen because they have crossed our paths and whose works adorn the walls of our homes. Artists discovered and collected for a long time and whose careers never cease to interest us. There are, of course, many other talented artists in Sète but we had to make a selection!

Phase 1 - Sète - September 2019

In September 2019, about fifteen artists from Los Angeles will be invited to exhibit at the former Conservatory of music and dramatic art conservatory of Sète. The projects exhibited will be inspired by the city as much as by their meetings with artists from Sète that they met in February 2019 in LA. Similar to LA, there will be an art exhibition at the MIAM (the Museum created by Herve di Rosa) along with performances and concerts in the regional center of contemporary art, the Paul Valéry museum, and the Theatre of the Sea.

Phase 2 - Los Angeles - November 2019

The second stage of this adventure will commence in Los Angeles, where artists from Sète will be part of a ten-day residency exhibition in February 2019. These 10 days of creating, editing, will culminate with 5 days of exhibitions, accompanied by a series of events: performances, concerts, film screenings, happenings, conferences, readings, etc that will be done in partnership with the VIP program of Frieze LA. Each artist from Sète will be offered the possibility to invite an artist based in California, or to explore an element of the city that inspires them. In addition to the hub of creation that we would like to be at the Standard West Hollywood, events will be organised in satellite venues - cinema and concert halls, an art gallery, and other iconic venues in the city…

HERE IT IS ELSEWHERE

Artists from Sète

Aldo BiascamanoPatricia BiascamanoStéphan BiascamanoArmelle CaronAndré CerveraRobert CombasChistophe CosentinoJean DenantHervé di RosaMarc DuranLucas MancioneJean-Marie PicardTopolinoAgnès Varda

Artists considered from Los Angeles Scoli AcostaVanessa AtlanBarbara CarrascoPercival EverettFrancesca GabbianiPiero GoliaKim GordonAlex Israël & Bret Easton EllisRichard JacksonPoeEddie RuschaJim ShawMarnie WeberJoséphine Wister Faure

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SCHEDULE

28 September 2018 - SètePresentation of the project and the selection of American artists.Exhibition of engraving cabinets Sète-Los Angeles.Dedication of the boxes by the artists.

23 November 2018 - ParisProject display.Exhibition of engraving cabinets Sète-Los Angeles.Exhibition Agnès Varda’s California.Projection of Mur murs, documentary by Agnès Varda, 1981

18-22 September 2019 - SèteExhibition of Angelinos and Sète artists in Sète.Creation of in-situ works, vernissage, happenings, conferences, performances, concerts, culinary tastings...

6-10 November 2019 - Los AngelesExhibition of Sète and angelinos artists in Los Angeles.Creation of in-situ works, vernissage, happenings, conferences,performances, concerts, culinary tastings...

COFFRET SÈTE-LOS ANGELES

The 14 artists from Sète realized for the association an original drawing engraved by the Dugrip-Picard-Jacomet workshop (DPJ) in Sète. The woodcut practiced by this workshop revives craftsmanship dating back to the fifteenth century. The paper used is handmade by the Moulin de Brousses.14 signed and numbered prints are collected in a box, with a custom-made binding.The funds raised will finance part of the exhibition Sète-Los Angeles.

14 printsSize: 25 x 18 cmEdition: 100 copies

LIMITED EDITIONS

Engraved woods made from original artist drawings for the Sète Los Angeles box

Engraving of Stephan Biascamano’s wood, Il Sotomarino Diamante di infernal, 2018

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LIMITED EDITIONS

Stephan Biascamano

Aldo Biascamano

Patricia Biascamano

Topolino

Marc Duran

Armelle Caron

Christophe Cosentino

Robert Combas André Cervera

Jean Denan Hervé Di Rosa

Agnès VardaJean-Marie PicardLucas Mancione

14 engravings of the box Sète-Los Angeles

Gazette de Montpellier, 28 septembre 2018

Art-vues, 28 septembre 2018

Elle, 7 décembre 2018

THE ARTISTS

Born in 1973 in Los Angeles, Scoli Acosta is represented by galerie Laurent Godin in France. «The aesthetics of resourcefulness» is a phrase that Scoli Acosta has often used to describe his wide-ranging artwork, which includes sculpture, installation, drawing, painting, photography, video and performance. Thirty-eight years old and slight of frame, Acosta has a sheepish but subtly theatrical demeanor that gives every conversation the feel of a performance. Though he grew up in Lincoln Heights and Baldwin Hills, he lived in Europe on and off through his 20s, speaks French, some German and some Spanish, and maintains a somewhat self-conscious relationship to English, his diction intermittently formal and colloquial. His process is one of meandering absorption, his work the outgrowth, in many cases, of his interactions with a particular place. Holly Myers, Los Angeles Times, 2011.

Levitating the Pentagon (poems), performance, 2011 © La Ferme du Buisson

THE ARTISTS

Scoli Acosta films himself in front of the frescoes in Los Angeles, those that Agnes Varda filmed in Walls Walls, which is happening in his hometown. The members of Asco (nausea in Spanish), militant Chicanos artists of the 1960s, appear with Scoli Acosta in the Phantom Sightings exhibition at LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) in 2008.

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Born in Paris (France) in 1971. Lives and works in Los Angeles.Vanessa Atlan has a Masters in Art History from the Sorbonne. Deliberately experimental, the artist explores - through various media including photography, paintings, collage, writings and sound - the intimate territories of her childhood in Sète (whose family is from) or her everyday life in Los Angeles. From her first photographic series, “Paris-Méditerranée” to “Wonderland Stereo” (an imaginary record label) her vision is profoundly connected to an emotional immediacy, balancing the fine line between fiction and reality like an existential thread. She has taken part in various exhibitions in Europe and the United States : Bonni Benrubi Gallery, NYC - HIE Gallery, Los Angeles - Galerie Philippe Chaume, Paris - Galeria Tagomago, Barcelona - Palazzo Spinelli, Naples.

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Downtown Jerusalem

Electric City

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Barbara Carrasco is an artist and muralist. Her works have been exhibited throughout the U.S., Europe, and Latin America: Vincent Price Art Museum /ELAC (Mid-Career Survey Exhibition, 2008), Museo José Luis Cuevas, Mexico (2006), The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA (1996); Armand Hammer Museum (1995,1999); Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art (1988); Museo del Choppo, Mexico (1984); and The Mexican Museum (1992). Her work has been featured in numerous publications: Ms. Magazine (2008), Los Angeles Times, New York Times; USA Today; Artforum; Boston Globe; new England Journal; High performance and Flash Art.

She received her M.F.A. in art from California Institute of the Arts (1991) and her B.F.A. in Art from UCLA (1978). Carrasco created numerous mural banners for the United Farm Workers Union (1976-1991). She was invited to the former USSR to paint murals in Leningrad and Armenia (1985 and 1987). Carrasco created computer animation PESTICIDES! that was presented on the Spectacolor Light-board at Times Square in New York (1989).

Her original mural sketches and drawings are included in the Permanent Collection of Works on paper at the Library of Congress, Washington D.C. (1989). Documentation of her mural work is archived in the California Murals Collection at the Smithsonian Institution (1983). A permanent collection of her papers has been established and archived at Stanford University Special Collections Mexican American Manuscript Collections (1996). Her oral history is archived at the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution (1999).Carrasco had her Mid Career Survey Exhibition, A Brush With Life, in 2008 at the Vincent Price Gallery at East Los Angeles College. Carrasco was appointed the 2002-2003 UC Regents professor for the Spring Quarter at UC Riverside. She has also taught at UC Santa Barbara and Loyola Marymount University. Carrasco currently serves as a board member of the Dolores Huerta Foundation. In 2008, The Girl Scouts of America created a merit patch based on Carrasco’s image of Dolores Huerta.

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L.A. History: A Mexican PerspectiveFresque murale, 43 panneaux

Children behind chain link fences, 2019Acrylic on canvas banners, 11 x 17 inches

Dolores Serigraphie, 2005. Tirage 165

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Born December 22nd 1956 in Fort Gordon, Georgia, Percival Everett is a writer and painter. A versatile author, his writings are at the crossroads of several literary genres. He graduated in biochemistry and philosophy at the University of Miami, recogniZsing that he was influenced by the writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein, including his semantic theories. He began his career in literature in 1983, when he completed a master’s degree at Brown University through the publication of his novel Suder, which is based on a professional baseball player. Percival Everett is an English teacher and director of the Department of English Literature at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. He is the winner of the 2010 John Dos-Passos Award.

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RomansGlyph (1999)Erasure (2001)American Desert (2004)Wounded (2005)The Water Cure (2007)I am Not Sidney Poitier (2009)Assumption (2011)Percival Everett by Virgil Russell (2013)

PoésieSwimming Swimmers Swimming (2010)

Intitle, 2014

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Born in 1965 in Montreal (Canada). Lives in Los Angeles. The idea of memory is at the heart of Francesca Gabbiani’s work. Her collages describe moments frozen in time and space. They create a space that seems familiar but strange, as if the viewer was visiting a new place he or she has already seen. She is represented by Gavlak Gallery in Los Angeles and Monica de Cardenas Gallery in Europe.

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Overlook (belmont Tunnel) gouache ink colored paper on paper 2017, 72 x 105 inches

Little leaves for Stella 16 x13 inches Unresolved story 2017 ink, gouache colored paper and acrylic on paper 105 x 72 inches

THE ARTISTS

Piero Golia was born in 1974 in Naples, Italy. His work has been exhibited in major exhibitions in the United States and Europe. From the beginning of his career, Piero Golia has overturned the conventions of contemporary art through concept, form and act. Luminous Sphere (2010), a mysterious luminous globe installed on the roof of the Standard Hotel on Sunset Boulevard, only comes on when Golia is in Los Angeles.Golia participated at the 2nd Moscow Biennale (2007), SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico (2008-09) at the California Biennial, Orange County Museum of Art (2008), at the 55th Biennale di Venezia, (2013) and Made in LA 2014, the fourth biennale of the Hammer Museum. Golia lives and works in Los Angeles, he is represented by the Gagosian Gallery.

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Piero Golia - Comedy of Craft © Gagosian

Piero Golia, The Painter, 2016. Photo by Daniele Molajoli, © Gagosian

THE ARTISTS

Kim Gordon studied at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles in the late 1970s. Her first solo exhibition presented under the name ‘Design Office’ took place at New York’s White Columns in 1981. For the past thirty years, Gordon has worked consistently across disciplines and across distinct cultural fields: art, design, writing, fashion (X-Girl), music (Sonic Youth, Free Kitten, Body/Head), and film/video (both as actress and director). Gordon’s artworks include the ongoing ‘Noise Painting’ series, depicting the names of experimental and noise groups; a series of paintings depicting the names of contemporary galleries and gallery owners; works from the untitled ‘From The Boyfriend’ series – Rorschach-like images painted on used denim skirts; ‘Twitter Paintings’ sourced from the Twitter streams of ‘GIRLS’ producer Jenni Konner, critic Jerry Saltz, and artist Richard Prince among others; and her ‘Wreath Paintings’, which employ the decorative folk forms as stencils to produce vertiginous color abstractions. An insistence on dismantling the hierarchical sanctity of the object has become a through line in Gordon’s practice, and in her most recent work, canvases are treated with direct application of paints, resins, glitters and fiberglass, as well as physical manipulation. Performing a painting becomes its own medium, as finished works are crumpled, overturned and flung. Fixed between states of de- and re-composition, battle scars from past performances become gestural abstraction via mischievous punk irreverence.

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Installation, 2018

Palmiers, 2018

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Alex Israel was born in 1977 in Los Angeles. Bret Easton Elis was born in 1964 in Los Angeles. The duo met in 2010. They instantly established a link. Their collaboration is a reflection on Los Angeles, where the two creatives were born and raised, and wants to be «a slideshow of the subconscious of the city». The duo’s work process is a back-and-forth exercise: they meet at a bar in a Los Angeles mall to exchange ideas, Easton Ellis writes his fictional texts from their discussions, and Israel travels iStock looking for pictures of scenes that best illustrate their feelings and chooses a font. The pieces are then printed and painted in the studios of Warner Bros, thus strengthening their relationship with Los Angeles and the Hollywood film industry.

Alex Israel and Bret Easton Ellis, Westside Pavilion Mall, Los Angeles, 2016. Photo by Aubrey Mayer

THE ARTISTS

Alex Israel and Bret Easton Ellis, Fourth Tequila, 2016, acrylic and UV ink on canvas, 72 × 144 inches (182,9 × 365,8 cm) © Gagosian

Alex Israel and Bret Easton Ellis, Was She in Pain?, 2016, acrylic and UV ink on canvas, 84 × 168 inches (213,4 × 426,7 cm) © Gagosian

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Los Angeles native, Patrick Jackson works as both a collector and a maker to create crowded, immersive mixed-media environments. Whether compiling found objects, setting a scene for a presumed homicide, or sculpting visceral and scarred ceramics, he is invested in narrative and conceptual installations.

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Drawings and Reliefs, 2016 © Ghebaly Gallery

THE ARTISTS

Eddie Ruscha is a multidisciplinary artist living in Los Angeles. He graduated from the California Institute of Art in 1991. Ruscha’s visual style is strongly influenced by graphic design, psychedelic album, comic strip and poster art, Italian interiors and fashion, as well as all the movements of the fine arts in the hope of blurring the boundaries between them. Art and music have always been inseparable for Ruscha. Eddie has released several records over the years, producing different styles of psychedelic electronic music. In the world of music, Ruscha is now nicknamed Secret Circuit. His work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions including The London Institute, Regional Fund of Contemporary Art.

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Cover and Music, 2018

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Born in Midland (USA) in 1952. Lives in Los Angeles. Close to the Californian neo-conceptual art scene of the 80s, Jim Shaw draws his inspiration from a vernacular culture far from the categories established by the history of art : paintings of amateurs recovered from flea markets, objects of popular cults, comics. He is also a collector of trinkets and religious symbols, which he collects in an imaginary museum that inevitably evokes the International Museum of Modest Arts (MIAM), founded by Hervé Di Rosa. He is represented by the Blum and Poe Gallery in the US and Praz-Delavallade in France.

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Esquisses et dessins, et 4 Elements Wigs (female set), 2012, Praz-Delavallade Galerie Paris

and Blum and Poe Gallery Los Angeles

Dream Drawing, 1998 Praz-Delavallade Galerie Paris and Blum and

Poe Gallery Los Angeles

Atelier Jim Shaw, Los Angeles, 2018

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Born in Bridgeport (United States) in 1959. Lives in Los Angeles. Marnie Weber invests the territories of music, performance, film and, in a more plastic field, those of installation, collage and sculpture. Each of these practices is overflowing in others: the costumes become sculptures, the collages illustrate the covers of discs, the music becomes soundtrack of the films and the sets of the fictions materialize in the installations. Marnie Weber belongs to a generation of Californian artists (with Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Jim Shaw or John Miller) who, in the land of Hollywood and Walt Disney, points to the fantasies of American culture.She is represented by Praz-Delavallade Gallery in Paris and Gavlak in Los Angeles.

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Marnie Weber as Spirit Girl (center) poses with her Monsters

Installation

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French-American artist Joséphine Wister Faure graduated from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts of Paris. She has taken part in various exhibitions in France (Fondation d’Entreprise Ricard, Le Plateau, Centre Pompidou, etc.), Italy, Germany, the United States and China. Joséphine Wister Faure’s work is built around her experiments on narration, through different forms of expression: video, performance, installation, writing and sculpture. She questions the mechanisms of perception as well as the observer’s implication, and creates openings for a narrative in which no scenario is imposed. She lives and works in Los Angeles and Paris.

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Going under, Mixed media installation, Guets-Apens, 2006

Last witness, 2010 The Source, Granit, 24 karat gold, sand H. Merrick, Los Angeles 2016

THE ARTISTS

Born in Sète in 1962.Aldo Biascamano is the author of a mythology around Sète.For over thirty years, Aldo has been forging links between the past, present and future and reinventing a surrealistic world. He paints his fantasy stories on wooden altarpieces, scenes that mix real and imaginary characters, water princesses and clams, salty kisses and mother-of-pearl, all to a backdrop of sand and gold. He also tells how the «banned barbecues» took place, organized around a «peïdolade», a culinary tradition inherited from his father and nomad fishermen, who in years gone by would settle on the beach of Sète for 6 months. A painter and story-teller, Aldo Biascamano films the scenes from his mythology with a Super 8 camera and organizes performances during which he integrates live or painted portraits, costumed dancers and projections of images into his narrative. His latest conferences were organized by Gallery Christian Berst and Maison Rouge in Paris.

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Retable de la Mythologie de Sète dans le passé, le présent et le futur, 2012

Énergié matérialisée comme dans le futur de la Mythologie de Sète, 2014

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Born in Sète in 1957.Patricia Biascamano is a sculptor. Patricia works with plastic paste and uses everyday bases such as porcelain plates or dishes. Her work is entirely miniaturized and all her subjects are drawn and colored before being placed on their base. True craftsmanship staging a host of characters, often in the summer sun during a show of some sort. Scenes that relate a boat jousting tournament, a bullfight, a Camargue boat race or a concert… With all the details of a lilliputian world, Patricia Biascamano delivers up her passion for traditions, the south of France, festivals, shows, popular rituals, and movements that bring folk together, from Sète to Madrid, Saintes-Marie-de-La-Mer, Bayonne and Sienna. Amongst other venues, her works were exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in Céret in 2008.

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Joutes nautiques à Sète (détail), 1994Assiette porcelaine, pâte plastique, acrylique

Joutes nautiques à Sète, 1994Assiette porcelaine, pâte plastique, acrylique

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Born in Sète in 1958.Stéphan Bisacamano is a sculptor, actor and video film-maker.When he was a child, «Fanfan» suffered from asthma and spent much of his time at home. He would draw all day long, sketching things around him. He dreamed of becoming a cartoonist until the day when, snorkeling with his father, he was suddenly cured. He then began to build models of submarines and for a while accepted a job as a mechanic. There, he started to collect objects of all sorts that he would assemble, weld and hybridize to bring his submarines to life. In each work, a scene takes place in the cockpit with wooden figurines of Frank Sinatra, an orchestra and smokers of marijuana… A multitude of details to scrutinize with the aid of a flashlight.His works are exhibited in France and also in Belgium, where most of his collectors now live.

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Le sous-marin «Diamante» Di Infernal, 2013

Peïdolade sous-marine, 2007

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Born in Eperney in 1978.Armelle Caron is a visual artist.From a very early age Armelle traveled every continent. Today, she reinvents traditional cartography by laying out cities in her own way. In her series «Tout bien rangé» (Neatly Arranged), she segments, aligns, classifies and redistributes, by shape and size, all the fragments that go to make up the plan of a city, cutting up urban space into small units. It is her way of redesigning a city, seeing it differently, creating a new typology and taking a fresh look at our mechanisms of perception. A graduate from the University of Lancashire and the Avignon «École Supérieure d’Art», Armelle Caron visited then «arranged» a number of cities worldwide before settling in Sète in 2012 (but refrained from re-arranging the town!).She also lists the guest-rooms in which she has stayed and for each one has designed a plan together with a text, plus a reminiscence of the atmospheres and physical feelings she experienced there. This work on intimate sentiments led to a publication in 2017 (Editions Parenthèse).

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Chambres, éditions Parenthèse, 2017

City Berlin

THE ARTISTS

Born in Sète in 1962.André Cervera is an expressionist painter, or «latin expressionist» as some collectors might say. Encouraged by Robert Combas, the young André Cervera was a fine arts student in Sète and became a painter. He worked alongside Hervé Di Rosa and embraced the burgeoning movement of free figuration but remained a free spirit on the fringe of mainstream trends. André loves to travel. From Morocco to Mali, Senegal to Spain, Croatia to the confines of India or China, he tours the world, recycles old wallpaper, ad posters and academic designs, sketching, pasting, cutting and stamping to create encounter and juxtaposition between people, stories, lifestyles and symbols. His painting is instinctive, edgy and sophisticated, it is also the expression of a relationship with the world that is continually challenged and in motion. In February 2018, he exhibited at the Musée Paul Valéry with Swarna Chitrakar, an Indian artist he met during a stay in West Bengal.

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Still life crab

Card players

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Born in Lyon in 1957.« If Robert Combas can be said to have an artistic ancestor, then it is the anonymous artist who drew and painted the odysseys in prehistoric caves by the yellow light of torches, amidst the feral perfume of lamps burning animal fat. You only need to see him turn away from his easel and, ecce homo, it’s easy to picture him, his hair just a little more tousled, his clothes replaced by animal hides, bearded, dirty and hirsute, looking perfectly at home among a primal horde of the Magdalenian era. Combas is a shaman: he paints like a shaman, he thinks like a shaman, and he lives like a shaman. » Michhel Onfray

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En hippocampe rouge et blancFier con et intelligent étalon des mers et des sons de la houle, Dieu du vent qui parle et des vagues

qui roulent en tapis de restes de larmes qui parviennent jusqu’au rivage. Des larmes et des lames,des bleus et des verts et le reste d’outre ciel ou de mer.

Acrylique sur toile 199 x 149 cm

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Born in Sète in 1963.Christophe Cosentino is a painter.He takes his inspiration from the changing colors and lights of the city. He loves fishing ports and the people who live there. He paints the workers on the quays, sailors with their tales of fantasy, silent hangars and, always, the sea, water and light. Christophe Cosentino works with linocutting, the thick but high-precision line that gives each subject true strength. Often working in black and white enhanced with a single color, he paints portraits, wizened faces tattooed with dreams and stories of life. In his paintings, he sometimes juxtaposes slivers of ceramics to create relief and cast light on a specific detail… a seabed, a fish or an imaginary flower. In 2015, Christophe created a monumental sculpture - «À tout coeur» - for the Quartier Haut exhibition at the Journées de l’Amour festival in Sète in 2017.

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On the Haven, 2013

Marins, 2007

THE ARTISTS

Born in Sète in 1979.Jean Denant is a visual artist. He grew up on the island of Thau amid concrete tower blocks and the nascent industrial park, facing the sunsets over the lagoon. At the frontiers of painting, architecture, design and sculpture, the work of Jean Denant poses the question of materials, laborious movement and identities. He sculpts giant globes directly onto walls with thousands of hammer blows that outline the five continents. It’s the building site element that interests him, work under construction, zones undergoing transition or future development. His materials - plasterboard, polystyrene, wood, heavy-duty adhesives and neon tubes - all come from industrial production. In 2016, his work «Mare Nostrum» was presented to the King of Morocco by French President François Hollande as a gift during an official visit on the fringe of the Cop22 summit. This work, also purchased by the city of Sète, is a monumental découpage in glossy stainless steel that reproduces the geography of the Mediterranean Basin and, like a mirror, reflects every horizon. Jean Denant is represented in Paris by the Galerie Anne de Villepoix.

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Module-x-01Galerie Anne de Villepoix

Mare NostrumAchat de la Ville de Sète

THE ARTISTS

Born in Sète in 1959. Hervé Di Rosa is a painter, collector and traveler…In 1981, Hervé co-founded the Free Figuration movement influenced by rock music, comic strips and graffiti... With no claim to any particular style but still laying milestones for the FF movement, he has developed his own specific narrative world inhabited by recurring characters that he has kept alive for over thirty years. In 1993, he embarked upon the «Autour du Monde» project (Around the World) and set out to explore different cultures. He fed on these, experimented with new know-how, formulated new techniques and produced new forms.It was Hervé Di Rosa who conceived of the Art Modestes movement, inspired by childhood, close to popular art, primitive art, raw art and craftsmanship, between which the boundaries are distinctly permeable. In 2000, he founded the Musée International des Arts Modestes in Sète (MIAM). In 2017, the Maison Rouge in Paris held an exhibition for the artist, now no longer alone in displaying his creation with the objects and works collected over the years. Over 200 personal Di Rosa exhibitions were held worldwide in 2017.

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Fnac 06 (détail) Exposition Di Rosa, plus jamais seul à la Maison Rouge, 2017

Atlantide

THE ARTISTS

Born in Sète in 1960. Marc Duran is a painter and musician.He had always drawn but started to paint only much later, with astounding success. In the 1990s he lived in England where he recorded several albums with his rock band Manchakou. Back in France, he composed an opera around the Cathar Heresy tragedy, «Multorum Querela», performed by the Orchestre National de Montpellier in 1997. He then left for Amazonia and stayed in Manaus for 8 years, where he continued to record music with local artists and, at the same time, wrote his novel «Bloody Mardi». Back in France, like some sort of revelation, he discovered painting. He explained how he sets out to freeze fleeting, figurative or abstract forms that he draws with thousands of dots. He composes his patterns, links and encircles them, then totally covers his canvas with paint. Intimate work that he compares to embroidery or a musical composition. In 2018 his works are on show at the DZ gallery in Metz.

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Flowers

Self-portrait as a couple at the beach

THE ARTISTS

Born in Sète in 1971.Lucas Mancione is a visual artist, video film maker and musician. He and Robert Combas formed the rock band «Les Sans Pattes». He draws figures, often animals but always weird that seem to leap out from the canvas. In the 1990s he lived in New York and produced drawings using video magnetic tape, clipped silhouettes that are scissored then mashed, coupled with other traced images that are also decomposed and fragmented in their movement. He dabbles with not only new digital tools but also such «obsolete» instruments as scissors, ball-point pens, tracing paper and colored thumb tacks. His visual and musical process is experimental and random. In 2012 he experimented with a new material, marble, and produced a work of art some 3 meters tall, a pointed ear cut from red-pink marble, which now stands in Sète beneath the semaphore facing the sea.

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Oreilles du Docteur Spock en marbre de carrare, 2013

La Jungle de l’image, Elizabteh Taylor, 2007

Wild wood, 105x90 cm, 2014

THE ARTISTS

Born in 1966 in Thionville.Jean-Marie Picard has been an engraver for over thirty years. He attended the school of fine arts in Nîmes, took courses with Daniel Dezeuze, traveled to Mexico (and elsewhere) and learned his craft with top names, including typographer Thierry Bouchard, with whom he collaborates in the publication of artists’ books. Over the years, he has honed skills with his preferred tool, the gouge, a variation on the wood chisel, whose iron blade is concave. In this digital day and age, Jean-Marie Picard believes firmly in returning to the origins of the printed page, i.e. the premise of the dissemination of knowledge. Established in Sète since 2012, the Dugrip-Picard-Jacomet studio embraces the pure tradition of artistic printing. Specializing in wood engraving and stencil printing, Jean-Marie works for and with artists and publishes original works of art. Together with this artisanal know-how, he continues to draw and work on his own engravings. His latest works, a layman’s interpretation of the Old Testament, were displayed in the chapel of the Quartier Haut in 2016 and 2017.

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Un mexicain

Woodcut Jim

Deux couples zapatistes

THE ARTISTS

Born in Sète in 1967.Marc Combas, alias Topolino, is a sketch artist. As soon as he could hold a pencil he would be filling up endless notebooks, drawing everything, everywhere and all the time. He would sneak around here there and everywhere like a little mouse (Topolino is the Italian name for Mickey Mouse) to draw scenes from everyday or imaginary life, unusual views of the world around him, or imaginary worlds inhabited by fabulous animals. Topolino has sketched Sète from every aspect, the town’s backstreets, the cranes, the boats and the views. He keeps a savory animal gazette of society artistic life and everyday completes his collection of Silly Songs. A seasoned traveler - Lisbon, Tokyo and New York among others - he captures live the specific atmosphere of each town, reproducing his own vision of places, a shaky vision of the world, of living matter and vibrant lines. In 2016, the Musée Paul Valéry dedicated an exhibition to his work on the town of Sète.

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Illustration pour Féerie sétoises,éd. Dans la boîte / L’Échappée belle, 2016

La Pointe courte, 2018

THE ARTISTS

Born in Ixelles (Belgium) in 1928.Agnès Varda spent her adolescence in Sète and then in Paris where she took classes at the École du Louvre and the Vaugirard School at night, in photography section.Since 1951, she lives in Paris 14th Street Daguerre and spends 2 long stays in Los Angeles.Photographer at the Festival d’Avignon then at T.N.P. directed by Jean Vilar, Agnès Varda wrote, directed and produced his first feature film in 1954, La Pointe courte, shot in Sète. Cleo from 5 to 7 is unanimously hailed. Then alternate short and feature films, documentaries and fictions, among which Le Bonheur (1964, Silver Bear in Berlin), Sans toit ni loi (1985, Lion of Gold in Venice), Les Glaneurs et laGlaneuse (2000), Les Plages d’Agnès (Cesar 2009), Agnès de-là de-là Varda (2011), Faces Villages, co-directed with the artist JR (2017, selected at the Oscars 2018). Since 2003, exhibits videos and installations around the world. 2015, Palme d’Or of Honor of the Cannes Film Festival, 2017, Honorary Oscar, for all of his work.In 2003, at the Biennale d’Art in Venice, Agnès Varda began her life as a «visual artist», installations, videos and photographs.

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Poster of the exhibition L’île et elleFondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, 2006

Les Plages d’Agnès, 2008Visages Villages, 2017

MUSICALPERFORMANCE

Les Sans pattesRobert Combas feels like a visceral need to unload this creative overflow in music. During the exhibition Sans filet in 2010, he met Lucas Mancione, a visual artist and videographer. A Sétois, just like him. Essential encounter, major, precious. Birth of les Sans Pattes on the edge of this new decade. Same exploratory hints, same artistic asperities, same common languages. Adventurous, daring, accomplice, complementary pair. Combas writing and composition, Mancione arranging and recording. On stage, they engage in performances - not concerts - in which videos shot in fixed shots look like live tableaux. At the same time, and almost to the end, Les Sans Pattes continue to accumulate matter. Greedy and devouring approach. Many titles in stock. Thus they push in its entrenchments a dark rock and cavernous, crude formwork, freed from all constraints, dressed with a millimeter light and a background of the scene where the illustrations collide. The duo is delivers to a hypnotic performance.

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SOPHIE DULINProject Manager Sophie Dulin always wanted to be a bookstore owner. After initial experience in London then Paris, she settled in Sète and opened her «Echappée Belle» bookstore. At the same time, she developed collaboration and publication work with local artists. She organizes exhibitions in the bookstore’s own gallery and in 2016, in partnership with the Musée Paul Valéry, she co-organized the launch of Michel Onfray’s book - «Fééries Sétoises» - and the Topolino-Combas exhibition. Her bookstore lies at the heart of the town’s culture, a focal point attracting the artists of Sète and elsewhere. In 2016 she welcomed rock singer Patti Smith for an exceptional dedication concert.sophie.dulin@neuf.frtel : +33 6 07 90 76 30

YANN PERREAUCuratorYann Perreau is curator, author and critic. After five years in London, as Book Attached to the French Institute of the United Kingdom then correspondent for Libération, Art Press, Beaux-Arts magazine, he moved to Los Angeles in 2007. Cultural Attaché for the Southwestern United States from 2007 to 2010, he founded his gallery Here is Elsewhere, in West Hollywood. He lives now between Paris, Istanbul and Los Angeles and organizes exhibitions world. Editor at large for www.postapmag.com, he collaborates with Inrockuptibles, France Culture, Vanity Fair. His last book, Anonymity: History (s) of a Counter-culture was published by Grasset in 2017. He is a member of the International College of Pataphysics and vice-president of the California International Art Foundation.yannperreau@gmail.comtel: + 33 6 40 97 70 73

VANESSA ATLAN Artistic Advisor, Los Angeles Visual Artist, born in Paris in 1971. Lives and works in Los Angeles. Vanessa Atlan has a Master in Art History from the Sorbonne. Deliberately experimental, the artist explores - through various media including photography, paintings, collage, writings and sound - the intimate territories of her childhood in Sète (whose family is from) or her everyday life in Los Angeles. From her first photographic series, “Paris-Méditerranée” to “Wonderland Stereo” (an imaginary record label) her vision is profoundly connected to an emotional immediacy, balancing the fine line between fiction and reality like an existential thread. She has taken part in various exhibitions in Europe and the United States : Bonni Benrubi Gallery, NYC - HIE Gallery, Los Angeles - Galerie Philippe Chaume, Paris... vanessa.atlan@gmail.comtel : +1 (213) 399 6147

THE TEAM

PAULINE BOYÉHead of Financing Landscape gardener, born in Paris in 1977.Pauline Boyé lives in Sète and travels the world. Holding a degree in economic and financial engineering, she changed tack in 2008 to become a landscape gardener, taking a special interest in wild flowers that she collects in limited-edition herbariums. In 2012 she published «Fleurs de bords de route» (Roadside Flowers) followed in 2014 by «Arbres et arbustes de bords de route» (Roadside Trees and Shrubs). Her herbarium of wild Mediterranean plants is on display at the Nomad Hotel in Las Vegas in 2018.paulinesalancon@gmail.comtel : +33 6 22 52 70 43

MARIE TAILLANEditorial CoordinatorAuthor and Publisher, born in Paris in 1974.An art historian and author of books on art, Marie Taillan has been the editor of Who’s Who in France since 2011. She is also editor at Editions Dans la Boîte, a publishing house which edits books about artists and Sète. Marie was a journalist for the art review «Pierre Bergé et associé» for 10 years.marie@editionsdanslaboite.comtel : +33 6 15 44 62 54

ANNE BOYÉArtistic Consultant Stylist born in Paris in 1949.A graduate from the Studio Berçot, Anne Boyé designed models from the Paul Boyé manufacturing company for over 20 years. With Pierre Boyé and Noëlle Tissier, she was behind the creation of the Espace Paul Boyé, an avant-garde venue that has left its mark on local artists (the Moules moules exhibition in 1991). In 1997 she founded La Barque Rouge, a store dedicated to the boat jousters of Sète.Today, she works with Hervé Di Rosa developing the MIAM (International Museum of Modest Arts) in Sète.a.boyemestier@free.frtel : +33 6 03 25 54 27

THE TEAM