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 performed music in venue like Berghain Berlin, Nuits Sonores, Kanal Centre Pompidou and composed the soundtrack for the ballet Drip Tekhne (Choreography Adam Linder, 2024) at The Royal Danish Playhouse in Copenhagen.

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!”.