artist/ SETCH

France

Sophie Gastaud was born in Boulogne-Billancourt in 1961, Christian Joliff in Quimper in 1957.

They met in 1981 at the Beaux-Arts in Paris, where they studied architecture in the same studio. There they learned drawing, painting and composition, as well as the pleasure of working together. After fifteen years of practising architecture, they decided to devote themselves entirely to the visual arts, where they gained greater freedom of expression.

A joint signature illustrates this new trajectory: SETCH

The discovery of the petroglyphs in the Vallée des Merveilles, in the Mercantour massif, was decisive: Why do these signs evoke such emotion when they don’t speak to us, when we know nothing about their origin, their function, their meaning, their raison d’être?

From that point on, their work has focused on blending simple, universal signs that span time and space. No representations, no stories told, no messages delivered, just a pictorial experience, a search for harmony and serenity.

Sculpture, discovered a dozen years ago through the cutting and bending of steel, now fills a gap between painting and architecture. It extends the search for an archaic truth, something lost and buried that connects us to each other.

What drives us is the desire to discover together – we, SETCH, that is to say Sophie AND CHristian – to grow together, to do together. So our project is not just an art project, it’s a life project. Learning to think “we” rather than always “I”. It is the scattered elements of our intermingled lives that lead us to these images, these forms, which we in turn offer to the gaze of others.

Sophie and Christian live and work in Brittany and the Alpes-Maritimes.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)