My name is Stéphane Gantelet and i’m a French artist interested in what algorithms do to volume and its relationship with nature.
On this site you’ll find sculptures and jewellery (I call them “wearable sculptures”) whose shapes are the result of this research.
But you’ll also find my watercolors, which I always sketch on the spot.
I’ve been registered with the “Maison des Artistes” since 1992 (France). That’s a long time !
If I had to be re-branded, I’d say I’ve exhibited 3 times at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris :))

Long version :

Where to start ? Let’s keep it simple and in order.
More or less.

I live and work in Cevennes (south of France) after 25 years in Sète (south of France also but by the sea). I started sculpting in England in 1989.
For the first 20 years of my artistic career, I worked in an art foundry where I also cast my sculptures, often figurative. This is the age of bronze !

At the same time, I developed a passion for virtual volume, and sought to bring my volumes out of the screen to materialize them in paper, then in stainless steel or steel. But working with volume on the computer is also working with images.

So I’ve started collaborating with authors of contemporary literature such as Juliette Mézenc and Cécile Portier on performances :

• Le journal du Brise-lames" at Sète’s regional contemporary art center (CRAC)
• Extra !" festival at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
• liter’tube" festival at the Georges Pompidou center in Paris
• Kolyada festival in Russia (Ekaterinburg, Ural)
• Etant donné" by Cécile Portier at the Chartreuse de Villeneuve lez Avignon as part of the Avignon Festival.
• les Bains Numériques" festival organized by the Enghein les bains arts center.
• chercher le texte" festival at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
• Then, in 2014, Juliette Mézenc and I decided to create a 3D literary video game based on her text « le Journal du Brise-lames » (https://www.publie.net/briselames/). I’ve started coding and will spend the next 5 years developing this game with Juliette, which will be released during the first confinement in 2020 by Publie.net. I’ve entered the digital age without restraint...

After developing sculptures that question what algorithms do to volume with the « MachineOs » series, I’m now focusing my research on their relationship with nature.
The result is a series of small sculptures entitled « Embranchements » , in which imaginary bones articulate branches of wood of different species.
Those who know me will know that I haven’t created any new sculptures in the last three years.

What happened ?

In fact, I’ve been busy with an enormous sculpture : I’ve restored an old house, abandoned for 100 years somewhere in the Cèvennes region, from cellar to ceiling.
So I’ve got a new studio built with straw and wood, with a constant eye to recycling and making as virtuous an environmental impact as possible.
This return to the countryside opened up a desire in me to work here in harmony with the seasons and the harmony of the place.
So I had to get out of the mainstream, which imposes its own rhythm.
My return to sculpture began with a complete overhaul of my website, in a bid to become autonomous.
I developed everything myself so as to have an ecosystem in which I understand every cog and to which I can make corrections. But above all, the site enables me to buy artworks directly, without intermediaries, and thus maintain accessible prices on authentic, signed and numbered works.
When you buy a work on my site (from 50€ for a watercolor to often less than 1000€ for a bronze sculpture) we are directly linked, you, the collector, and I, the artist. I develop this point in more detail on the page answering this question on the site.
Not all works on the site are for sale.

And to get going again, I’m also launching two new sections :

• “Branching” in gold, silver, gold, bronze or stainless steel, featuring small imaginary bones connecting two tree branches of different species.
• “Big ring” in gold, silver, gold, bronze or stainless steel, featuring large rings that extend my artistic research.

Other info :

• collaboration with choreographer Mitia Fédotenko of the AutreMina company (Montpellier) on the creation of the set design for « Les filles pleurent aussi », proposing a set of folded paper modules manipulated and deployed by the dancers on stage during the show. Premiere at Albi’s Grand Théâtre in October 2019.
• computer skills in professional volume software (3DSMax, Alias, Blender, Autocad, Mudbox, Géomagic, MeshLab), image software (Photoshop, Combustion, SketchDesigner) and video game software (Unity), as well as programming and web development (SQL, PHP, JS).
• Stéphane Gantelet is supported by the Languedoc Roussillon region and the DRAC for the purchase of software and hardware.