Sophie Dulin • [email protected] • +33 6 07 90 76 30 Yann Perreau • [email protected] • +33 6 40 97 70 73 Association Sète - Los Angeles • 12 quai de la République 34200 Sète France Instagram : @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 THE CONCEPT 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. A SECRET STORY 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. HERE IT IS ELSEWHERE 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… ARTISTS Artists from Sète Aldo Biascamano Patricia Biascamano Stéphan Biascamano Armelle Caron André Cervera Robert Combas Chistophe Cosentino Jean Denant Hervé di Rosa Marc Duran Lucas Mancione Jean-Marie Picard Topolino Agnès Varda Artists considered from Los Angeles Scoli Acosta Vanessa Atlan Barbara Carrasco Percival Everett Francesca Gabbiani Piero Golia Kim Gordon Alex Israël & Bret Easton Ellis Richard Jackson Poe Eddie Ruscha Jim Shaw Marnie Weber Joséphine Wister Faure SCHEDULE 28 September 2018 - Sète Presentation of the project and the selection of American artists.