Erwan Sene

b.1991 Paris, France

Lives and works in Paris, France

The work of Sene is based on a sculptural corpus that extends over several levels and is composed in the future perfect tense. Letting himself slide along the slope of a multidimensional everyday life that he reimagines in all kinds of enigmatic tales, his practice reconsiders his own way of living and digesting the objects around him. He creates staging with a vast array of materials, between baroque remanence and day-to-day surrealism, and broaches the themes of language and science fiction. He develops strange ecosystems, a set of vibrant, dystopian and interconnected urban furniture that communicates through a language devised by the artist. 



Instagram : @erwansene
Email : erwansene@gmail.com  


Sene has exhibited work at Aranya Art Center China, Collection Lambert Avignon,  City SALTS Birsfelden Switzerland, Frac des pays de la Loire Nantes, Liebaert Project Kortijk Belgium, MoCo Montpellier, COUNCIL+ Berlin, Espace Niemeyer Paris, Balice Hertling Paris, High Art Paris.

As Musician he release his first album JUnQ on PAN (2023) and perfomed music in venue like Berghain Berlin, Nuits Sonores, Kanal Centre Pompidou and composed the soundtrack for the ballet Drip Tekne (Choregraphy Adam Linder, 2024) at The Royal Danish Playhouse in Copenhagen.

Studio Visits
Aranya Art Center, Beidaihe, China

July 14 - October 13th 2024

Curated by Damien Zhang & Wu Yiyang

Commissioned and produced by Aranya Art Center 

Datacomb Area
Liebaert Project, Kortrijk, Belgium

17.Sep - 29.Oct 2023


In his exhi­bi­tion ​‘Datacomb Area’, Erwan Sene lays seems to have entered into con­ver­sa­tion with hawk­ish rulers, who have told him of their hatred for poet­ry; with those who man­age the levers of pow­er and use their con­trol mech­a­nisms to plan the final assault on the last remains of free­dom. Here and there they have plant­ed strange-look­ing machines, like beasts made of met­al and fit­ted with plas­tic cables, lurk­ing on us from rusty street fur­ni­ture.

However, these sur­veil­lance tech­nolo­gies appear to be get­ting increas­ing­ly lost in their own dis­course. They seem to be able to talk only about the milieu of wide­spread fraud, the arti­fi­cial and of pol­lu­tion, which they them­selves have spread and in which they bathe them­selves. They are qui­et­ly becom­ing exhaust­ed, even despite their abil­i­ty to imi­tate the kind of bio­lu­mi­nes­cence found only in the deep­est seas. The flash­ing lights that are the sign of their pow­er and pres­ence grow dim every day.

With this, a dead­ly tri­umph sud­den­ly changes course as the path towards a vibrant life becomes pass­able again. Where con­trol and sur­veil­lance try to make their mark, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a game always remains, even if it is hide-and-seek. Through his inter­ven­tions, Erwan Sene reveals an amuse­ment park that could well be a memo­r­i­al to the bygone dreams of a tech­ni­cal utopia. It could also be a place for cel­e­bra­tion, where the col­lec­tive sen­sa­tion of redemp­tion con­tin­u­al­ly re-enchants the taint­ed sur­face of life. —
 Guillaume Blanc-Marianne.

Zona Gargantua
Balice Hertling, Paris FR

February 3rd - April 1st, 2023

Curated by Pierre-Alexandre Mateos and Charles Teyssou

The show introduces several sculptural and graphic works that may also function as sound pieces. Composed of various objects found in the streets of Paris, Erwan Sene’s sculptures appear seemingly forbidden or mute. Molded and enrobed in various distinct textures, dressed and undressed, these ruins are the object of an apparent undoing. The works resemble the urban furniture from an imaginary of Paris during the Glorious Thirty (1945 - 1975), a time in which the city’s obsession with modernity meant its spirit was incorporated in its every feature, from public toilets to Roissy-Charles de Gaulle. But here, the lamp posts, vespasiennes, and station latrines seem to have been extracted from the depths of the city. In reality, they have been reworked to compose a grotesque geography, as if the 14th century French humanist Francois Rabelais had been a video game designer: “Zona Gargantua”, his last foray in the industry, is set in a neo-medieval Paris where all the textures are added in stained strata. Mechanized protuberances and devices in the process of digestion blink to the sound of salesmen's secret jibes.

In the “Zona Gargantua”, no one speaks the same language but everyone understands each other, everything has a stench but there is no smell, nothing is clean yet all is completely sterile. “Zona Gargantua” is what happens to Paris when you remove its successive layers of botox: “Under the paving stones, the collagen!”.

SUPPERCLUB HK
Hong Kong Island , HK

March 24th - March 30th 2024


Agrotheater Room, 2023
Gargotta Fonti, 2023
Usina Rabela, 2023
ConAg Jail, 2023

cm. 30 x 25 x 25  
Wood, Polyurethane, Ceramic, Thermoplastic, Laser Print, Carpet, Paint Aluminium

Erwan Sene - JUnQ (2023) , PAN131

JUnQ, or the Journal of Unsolved Questions, is modeled on a parallel exercise: to sketch music and to score sculptures. Part exhibition, part book and part album release, JUnQ seeks to propose a collaborative language that binds the algorithmic needs of an artificial pop star to the performance of the artist himself.

The immersive project released by PAN represents Erwan Sene’s debut album and the multifaceted nature of his approach. Composed like a chorus of fantastical beasts, the album wanders atmospherically through a fogged wood. Sounds are never used for their default function–– they are sculpted, distorted and amplified, becoming hybrids of themselves. A haunting banshee, the monstrous growl of an Orc, Siren songs wafting through the trees–– these and more are recreated with sinuous violins, muffled harpsichord and digital instruments, culminating in a a vibrant “jungle” of sound.

Each page of the JUnQ book dives into the neon structures of Sene’s mutations: miniatures, models and ventilation details echo the micro-evolution of Sene’s “imaginary mundane.” Casting his contained biotope as a friend, rather than a foe, the fragmented view of these works imbues them with a sense of intimacy and primacy.

The JUnQ book features a bespoke type designed in collaboration with Marie Mam-Sai Bellier and Marine Stephan. Evocative of archeology and the imagined glyphs traced by lost civilizations, the type provides an (il)legible scripture to JUnQ’s multi-fold universe.

Mastered by Rashad Becker
Mixed by James Ginzburg


1. Zones 03:19
2. Lowghost 01:57
3. Strange fruit 04:13
4. Echo When Talking 03:25
5. Smoke 02:51
6. Tilt 03:28
7. Mirama 01:46
8. Siren 03:37
9. Block That Kill 04:19
10. Black Out Bar 03:18