Frédéric Coché (Coming soon)
Engraver, painter and draughtsman, Frédéric Coché (1975) is a graduate of the Institut Saint-Luc in Brussels and the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Art in Nancy. He has taught engraving in Geneva and Biarritz. He took his first steps in the magazine Frigobox before publishing Hortus Sanitatis, his first book and the beginning of his engraved work.
An enthusiast of literature and medieval art, he has taken an aesthetic approach to the forms of narrative in images across the centuries, often colliding narrative universes borrowed from different eras and imaginations.
His project at Villa Medici
To create his latest graphic narrative, which will be produced in etching, Frédéric Coché will collect images: grotesques from the Domus Aurea, or those by Tiepolo father and son, Raphael’s frescoes, etc. These will compose a narrative articulated around the theme of the labyrinth and introspection. Geometry (in this case, the labyrinth) is once again confronted with formlessness, and the tension in the drawing, or in a series of drawings, is generated by the balance and imbalance between these two principles. The narrative travels underground, in gardens and the city, in the air.
The ADAGP, the French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici, and the International City of Comics and Image (CIBDI – Angoulême) are committed to supporting the vitality and diversity of comics through a creative residency aimed at supporting an innovative comic book project by an author each year.
The selection committee, composed of Nejib, a comic book author, Pili Munoz, director of the CIBDI’s Maison des Auteurs, and Frédéric Blancart, head of the resident artists and fellows at Villa Medici, selected the author Frédéric Coché for his project.
About the International City of Comics and Image
The International City of Comics and Image is a public institution for cultural cooperation created by the Charente department, the French Ministry of Culture, the city of Angoulême, and the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, dedicated to comics and images. It includes a comic book museum, exhibition galleries, a heritage library, a specialized public library, a documentation center, an international residence for authors (La Maison des Auteurs), a reference bookstore, and an art-house cinema. The City holds the largest comic book heritage collection in Europe and actively supports emerging creators by hosting more than 50 authors in residence, over 60% of whom are foreign. The institution welcomes more than 200,000 visitors each year and runs an extensive socio-educational program to share the richness of the 9th art with a broad audience.
The International City of Comics and Image is directed by Pierre Lungheretti.
www.citebd.org
About the ADAGP
The ADAGP is the French copyright society for visual arts. It collects and distributes royalties for nearly 200,000 artists worldwide, including 15,500 in France. It manages collective rights (such as photocopy rights, private copy remuneration, cable, satellite, and ADSL retransmission, library lending, educational uses…) for over 1,000 comic book and manga authors who are members of ADAGP. The authors’ society also collects resale rights when original comic book pages and drawings are resold in the art market (auction houses or galleries).
Through its cultural action program, ADAGP encourages the creative scene by initiating and/or financially supporting projects that promote visual arts on both national and international levels.
www.adagp.fr
Portrait © Frédéric Coché