CONFERENCE

amandine_lecture

The 2 day Pictoplasma PARIS Conference at la Gaîté lyrique is packed with inspiring talks and presentations by some of today’s most innovative talents. The diverse line-up of lecturers hails from around the globe, first confirmed speakers include Geneviève Gauckler (FR), Pic Pic andre (BE), Motomichi Nakamura (JP/EQU), Amandine Urruty (FR), Raymond Lemstra (NL) and Yves Geleyn (FR). The lectures and panel discussions focus on contemporary character culture and cover a wide range of media and disciplines, such as illustration, graphic design, animation, fashion and art.
Conference language: French!

TICKETS AVAILABLE > TROUGH THE VENUE

Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar met in 1986 while they were both students at Belgium’s School of Visual Arts. Soon after their graduation, they decided to extend their collaboration by setting up together the Pic Pic André workshop, characterised by their ability to master a wide range of animation techniques as well as a quirky “off the wall” Belgian sense of humour. The duo is best known for bringing to life a whole set of little plastic toys for their cult stop motion TV series Panique au village (A Town Called Panic), mean while turned into a feature film which premiered in the Official Selection at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.

Rilla Alexander, member of Australian art and design collective Rinzen, moved to Berlin a few years ago with her partner Steve. Her work is influenced by vintage children books and mythical stories which inspire her to create characters with complex identities.

Rilla spoke at the very first Pictoplasma Conference, way back in 2004, and, amongst other, introduced us to her character Sozi. Her devotion to Sozi hasn’t diminished and in 2010 she has released Her Idea, a book about Sozi’s ongoing struggle and triumph of making ideas happen.

Geneviève Gauckler is a French artist, illustrator and art director who is best known for her ever-evolving procession of lovable characters and Technicolor digital mashes. Her works are bright, fun and hectic – often combining symmetrical designs with soft-edged computer generated images laid against photographed backgrounds. She has exhibited all over the world and has had art commissioned by many advertising agencies and magazines. In recent years she has been dividing her time between advertising works and creating her own artwork, which she refers to in good humour as “silly and absurd”.

After studying art in Paris, Yves Geleyn started as a freelance graphic designer. But it was with animation that Yves fully began expressing himself. Soot Giant, a story of a long-legged giant that wanders the street at dusk, was one of his first animated creations that completely turned him towards motion. Since then he has continuously developed his style on many award winning projects and recently created a lyrical mystery piece with enigmatic weightless forms and a bestiary of magic creatures for La Gaîté Lyrique. Yves considers himself not as a director but rather a storyteller; for story and characters are the most important things to him.

Dutch designer Raymond Lemstra started fully focussing on drawing in 2010. In his work he makes references to the illustrative nature of primitive drawing and sculpture, while his main interest is the distortion as a result of selective emphasis; parts of interest are emphasized, unimportant parts reduced or left out.

His characters are often big headed, with a strong focus on the face while the body is trimmed to its essential properties. This contrast evokes a clash of intent, simultaneously assuming simplicity and complexity, randomness and reason, flaws and perfection.

Motomichi Nakamura was born in Tokyo, Japan and graduated from Parsons School of Design, New York. After working and living in Brooklyn for several years, he recently moved to Ecuador, Latin America.

Minimal use of color (black, white and red) as well as a strong focus on the creation of characters and creatures using simple graphic elements characterizes Motomichi’s work across all digital and traditional media.

The subjects in his work often reflect a conflictive nature, being part human and part monsters.

Hidden behind this onomatopea is Mehdi Hercberg, a prolific, instinctiv artist and graphic design teacher in Ecole Estienne, Paris, born in 1973 in Lille / France.
Much influenced by both, Art brut and the Japanese experimental scene, Shobohsobo’s work has a rigorous and repetitiv spirit that leads to a total abandonment of gesture and representation. Often approaching utter abstraction, his drawings and especially his work on walls combine spontaneous improvisation and precise control. His whole univers is swarming with monsters, characters with doodled anatomy, geometrical and drooling landscapes.

Amandine Urruty lives and works in Toulouse, France. After studying fine arts, Amandine spread her repertoire of weird characters in all kind of media, with colour pencils as her tool of choice.

She offers a cheerful gallery of deviant portraits, associating grotesque outfits and baroque, young ladies with too much make-up. Their reubenesque carnality stands in contrast with the soft tone of the colours she favours and and the innocent first appeal of her works. Amandine is represented by Galerie LJ, Paris.

Pictoplasma | Paris 2011