21st International Biennial of Engraving Sarcelles-France 2023

The City of Sarcelles and its Janine Haddad art school with the support of the Ministry of Culture present: the 21st edition of the Sarcelles International Engraving Biennial (25/11 – 10/12)

Soon my art at 21st International Biennial of Engraving Sarcelles-France 2023!

Printed during blackouts in Kyiv, 2022:

The City of Sarcelles and its Janine Haddad art school with the support of the Ministry of Culture present, from November 25 to December 10, the 21st edition of the Sarcelles International Engraving Biennial. Etchings, burins, aquatints in black and white or color, more than 450 works by 250 artists from 36 countries will be exhibited for the first time to the French public. Among the highlights, the spotlight on Mexican engravers, the unique presentation of works by the Lebanese painter-engraver Assadour, as well as carte blanche in Canada, Colombia, Italy, Japan, to Poland, Armenia, Lebanon and Ukraine. Around a 1 m000 exhibition, the Biennale also offers guided tours, conferences, workshop visits and demonstrations for all audiences. Enough to show and experience all the vitality of contemporary engraving and the richness of an art in constant evolution since the first trace left by prehistoric man. The event is free.

INTERNATIONAL BIENNIAL OF TEAL ENGRAVING: DATES TO REMEMBER
PUBLIC RECEPTION
From November 25 to 10 December 2023
Free entry (no reservation required) Tuesday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 17:30 p.m., Thursday from 10 a.m. to 20:30 p.m. and Sunday from 14 p.m. to 17 p.m.
Engraving Village, Janine Haddad Art School

WORKSHOP TOURS AND DEMONSTRATIONS
For schools and groups. By appointment with the Department of Cultural Affairs on 01 34 38 20 56

VISITS-CONFERENCES LEADED BY THE CURATOR OF THE BIENNIAL
Thursday, November 30, 2023 from 19 p.m. to 20:30 p.m.,
Saturday, December 9, 2023 from 15:30 p.m. to 17 p.m.
Free entry by reservation with the Janine Haddad Art School.
Phone. : 01 39 90 54 17 and ecoledart@sarcelles.fr

Address: Village de la Gravure, Janine Haddad Art School
5 route de Garges – 95200 Sarcelles
Transilien line H (departure from surface station at Gare du Nord), Sarcelles Saint-Brice stop

****************

The 21st Biennale in 4 highlights
Alongside a selection of works by 73 French and international artists selected from among 182 engravers who responded to the call for participation launched in January 2023, and works by the 180 best French and international engravers among established artists and students of the Academy of Fine Arts of Venice, the Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux-arts and the Ecole Estienne de Paris, the Biennale will offer 4 highlights.

1. Mexican engravers honored
Since its creation, the Biennale has put a country or region of the world in the spotlight. For this 21st edition, it presents a unique selection of engravings by artists among the greatest contemporary engravers in Mexico. As soon as we talk about Mexico, stereotypes come to mind: music, mariachis, tequila, tacos and even guacamole. We also think of the great Mexican artists Diego Rivera and Frida Khalo, but we often forget Rufino Tamayo and Francisco Toledo, two artists who are at the origin of the development of engraving in Mexico. We will discover the etchings of abstract artists, but most often figurative, inspired by human and animal representations, totemic forms, resurgences of the civilization of the Inca people.
The art of engraving in Mexico is a true means of expression and communication, which is displayed on city walls and was popularized by the use of wood engraving and linocut techniques.
500 km southeast of Mexico City, Oaxaca, capital of the state of the same name, cradle of one of the oldest pre-Hispanic civilizations, the Zapotecs, has become the center of engraving made up of several dozen workshops and of galleries dedicated to the art of printmaking.
Under the leadership of Fernando Aceves Humana, artist engraver, a number of artists have been very generously involved in spreading the practice of this art, by creating ephemeral engraving workshops in the poor villages on the outskirts of Oaxaca. They also made possible the creation of an engraving workshop in the Oaxaca prison, for long-term prisoners.

2. The guest artist of honor: Assadour, Lebanese painter-engraver
Born in Lebanon in 1943 and introduced to drawing in Beirut, Assadour Bezdikian, known as Assadour, continued his training at the Ecole des Beaux-arts in Paris in the studio of Lucien Coutaud. His work is now part of public and private collections in France and internationally.

Assadour is above all an engraver: “When I engrave,” he says, “I express an analytical side of my temperament, I dissect the image and, with it, the thought. I’m like a surgeon.”

Assadour had his first exhibition in Beirut in March 1964, the same year he moved to Paris and enrolled at the Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux-arts. His painting is part of the Armenian framework: rhetoric and symbolism of the interior landscape, its desolation and its management in a frozen and repetitive pain supported by a technical virtuosity which has become the necessary corollary of expression. He seems to speak only of desert landscapes and disjointed worlds, but in such a precise, meticulous manner and at the limit of readability which can reach the general public, that he no longer uses easy themes or thematic variations. , but of the assembly of an interior world from pictorial elements gradually put in place.

3. Carte blanche to Canada, Colombia, Italy, Japan, Poland, Armenia, Lebanon and Ukraine.
True “pillars” of the Biennale, several of these countries invited from previous editions are present with new works whose wide representation makes it possible to measure the evolution of trends over time. Note in this carte blanche a touching meeting of engravings, produced by Colombian artists, Italian artists and Lebanese artists, especially for this edition.

4. The engraving workshop of the Janine Haddad School of Art open to practice in all directions, inside and outside the walls
The Biennale allows visitors to discover the practice of engraving and the engraving workshop of the Janine Haddad School of Art, equipped with 4 presses, which offers a wide variety of techniques: drypoint, linocut, intaglio , mezzotint, carborundum, collagraphy, etching, aquatint, wood, burin, etc.

Guided tours of the exhibition offered by the City’s Cultural Affairs Department and workshop visits to raise awareness and practice engraving are organized for all audiences and led by staff from the Janine Haddad art school in management of: children, adolescents and adults, in school groups, leisure reception groups, neighborhood centers, social centers, associative mediation groups and as part of free visits for the public.

During the two weeks of exhibition, these groups will benefit from meetings with students from the Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux-arts and the Ecole Estienne de Paris, who will present their productions of the year, the result of extensive research. and experiments that they will explain. The aim of these exchanges is to enable young people to benefit from the experiences of students, testifying to their educational background and the different professional orientation choices offered by their school.

This exhibition thus gives rise to a program of artistic and cultural education actions aimed at young people and families from priority neighborhoods during school, extracurricular and extracurricular times which is part of the partnership agreement for artistic and cultural, established in 2021 between the City of Sarcelles and the Academy of Versailles for a period of 3 years. More than sixty hours of awareness-raising and engraving practice workshops will be offered for all audiences: schools, leisure centers, children, adolescents and adults.
This course, structured around the 3 pillars of artistic education, combines:

a) the encounter of young audiences with works of art, to enable them to cultivate their sensitivity, their curiosity, their gift of observation, to exchange with an artist-engraver, to identify the diversity of places and actors cultural of the territory;

b) the introduction of young audiences to the art of engraving, with the aim of enabling them to use techniques of artistic expression adapted to a production, to implement a creative process;

c) the transmission of knowledge and knowledge to enable young people to express aesthetic emotion and critical judgment, to use vocabulary appropriate to each artistic field, to connect different fields of knowledge, to mobilize their knowledge and skills experiences serving the understanding of a work.

This exhibition also offers conferences and demonstrations for all audiences. Enough to show and experience all the vitality of contemporary engraving and the richness of an art in constant evolution since the first trace left by prehistoric man. 4 people are expected for this event resolutely placed under the sign of discovery and astonishment, entry to which is free.

INFO from site: https://www.grand-roissy-tourisme.com/en/agenda/21eme-biennale-internationale-de-la-gravure-de-sarcelles/