Sandra Zeenni, sculptor and ceramic artist

Sandra Zeenni is a sculptor and ceramist. In her workshop, in the dynamic Montorgueil neighbourhood of Paris, she focuses on shapes, materials and light.

There’s no computer or internet here, just two large kilns, a slab roller to create pottery plates, shelves filled with shapes, experiments and finished works, and many boxes containing her extensive research on glazing.

To create her latest pieces, shown in December and January in Paris at Silbereis Gallery, she pushed up the capacity of her kilns for larger formats.

Meet Sandra Zeenni with us!

The Nobes Series, whose name is derived from the word “bones”, is inspired by the organic shapes and curves of the human body. Sensual volumes, covered with dense but uneven black or brown glaze sometimes stained white, are smooth, shaped from two clay slabs assembled in a true co-mingling with the earth.

This sculptural work originated with her Oubches Series (the name derived from the French “bouche” or “mouth”); where white and rounded parts like bones are deformed and polished almost like game pieces.

Her first creations, the Turquoises, vases in pure and classic forms, were immediately hailed as a great success. She was inspired by great master ceramicists like Decoeur and silversmith Després, and older pieces, notably Phoenician vases that recalled her Lebanese origins. They’re often described as looking like they could have come from a treasure chest from an ancient sunken vessel.

Alex Vervoordt and Pierre-Marie Giraud, the reknowned Belgian and Flemish gallerists, noticed The Turquoises and showed them at Art Basel, in Brussels, where they were bought by museums and collectors. In 2013 she was part of an expo on the Mediterranean at Villa Empain / Boghossian Fondation in Brussels called 'The Blue Route, from the Mediterranean to China.'

When she decided to devote herself entirely to ceramics, Sandra Zeenni learned all the techniques of her craft from masters in the field : the mastery of the earth in the workshop of Augusto Tozzola; the secrets of enamel from Helena Klug, who imparted her love for beautiful work done slowly, and an internship with the highly recognized Wayne Fischer. Her residency in Japan gave her the confidence to confront and master larger formats.

"The mastery of the material is essential -- then you have the freedom to create," she says. "Now I can concentrate on shapes and materials that I want."

In the coming months, this means further work on Nobes. And maybe to "play a little bit with the classic turquoise" and find a way to modernize it.

Discover more on her work on her website 

Where to see her work in 2014 in France

Silbereis Gallery in Paris

Maylis Queyrat in Paris

Capazza Gallery in Nançay

Musée National Adrien Dubouché, Limoges, June to October

Musée de Sarreguimes (November 2014 till March 2015)

Who will you meet in Bernini's forest?

Romain Bernini

Romain Bernini

Romain Bernini

Romain Bernini

Romain Bernini

Romain Bernini

What a treat to see Romain Bernini develop into a true talent in the art world.

Most of us didn't see his exhibition this summer in a castle near Toulouse. But his newest exhibition, Woods, in his Parisian gallery, provides the visitor with a veritable walk in the forest, with 8 - 10 large-scale depictions of trees providing you with a physical immersion in his creative environment.

Then there's a clearing, and you enter into a world where average, jeans-wearing, soft-around-the-middle contemporary men have donned the masks of a tribal yesteryear, while the wolves howl around the perimeter, with only a ramshackle outbuilding to demarcate the wild from the civilized.

How is it, his works seem to ask, that I/we have come to this place, where the savage, the effervescent life of the woods, the mystical communion with wild energy, is disintegrating before our eyes?

Upstairs, we were enchanted by smaller works, including a lovely snowy owl, and the always welcoming gallerist Suzanne Tarasiève herself, and her crew.

Guillaume Brunet Vice City serie

Thibault Brunet, Vice City

You’ll never guess where these photographs were taken

Thibault Brunet’s photos aren’t the large, vibrant, glossy photos that draw your eye across the gallery. They’re atmospheric landscapes and streetscapes, eerily deserted and monochromatic. They’re so unlike anything out there, yet somehow familiar. And so you approach.

Further inspection reveals a digital quality to them -- the hovering presence of pixels. And it’s at this point, when you’re still puzzling it out, that Valerie Cazin of Galerie Binôme approaches and lets you in on the secret -- and you lean in even closer.

Many kinds of people play video games, but not many play them like Thibault Brunet

Brunet's series, First Person Shooter

His photographer’s sensibility led him to steer his avatar away from interactions, the “murder, blackmail, theft and escape, enemy liquidation, bombing…” or war-zone occupations, as he says.

Instead, he sought out the “forgotten spaces” of the games -- spaces void of any action beyond the crashing of digital waves upon the shore.

We see digital roads begging to be driven down, satellite receiver dishes peeking over the horizon, and contemporary buildings. In some photos, you can even see the glimmer of the virtual car’s headlights, where Brunet has pulled over to snap his photo.

That was his Vice City series. His more recent works, First Person Shooter and Landscape show clearly the high cost of war, whether etched on the faces of soldiers or on the surfaces of buildings -- all rendered with the shimmering, vaguely unreal quality of a digital moment in time.

Ask us about a day of digital art in Paris. Together, we'll discover the works of Thibault Brunet at Galerie Binôme, where they are currently exhibited in a group show on until March 1, 2014.