Jocelyn Cottencin

After studying both art and architecture, he turns to different domains in what is called applied arts – notably, design, architecture, and graphic art. Considering typography as a graphic and plastic material, Jocelyn Cottencin experiments it through different forms : performance, interventions in public spaces, installations, drawings, books, and scenography as in the work Vocabulario in 2007, created with Tiago Guedes, choreographer and I Can’t Believe The News Today, created in Pau (FR) in 2009.

He has been collaborating with Loïc Touzé for over ten years and has conceived the scenography of several pieces, such as LOVE (2003), 9 (2007), La Chance (2009) and recently Gomme (2011) and Ô MONTAGNE (2013). In 2009, he works with choreographer Emmanuelle Huynh for Cribles and in 2014 for Tozai … !. In 2010, he takes part in the project J’ai tout donné by Alain Michard for the Centre Culturel Colombier where he creates the « Centre de documentation ».

As a visual artist, he is invited by La Criée-Contemporary Art Centre, to develop over a period of two years a project between Bilbao, San Sebastian, Glasgow, Porto, Lisbon and Rennes, called Just a Walk (2008). He creates a series of photographs entitled L’objet du Désir for the Pôle Sportif of Quimper in 2009, a work based on archived sports photography. In 2010 he is part of the second edition of the Ateliers de Rennes – contemporary art biennial, where he coordinates the editorial project Journal d’Anticipation.

He conducted the project with La Criée and the FRAC Bretagne in April 2012 called Cela dépend de la façon dont les cartes tombent. For the event Voyage à Nantes, he developed a luminous installation on the Île de Nantes which was presented from June to October 2012 and during the Nuit Blanche in Paris in 2012.

Currently his work is shown at Musée national des arts décoratifs in Paris within « Recto/verso » a collective exhibition of eight artists exploring the problematic relationship between the graphic designer’s commissioned works and personal projects, and thus also between fine art and applied art.

His video project Monumental produced by the Musée des Beaux Arts de Calais, the Sainsbury art visuel centre of Nottingham and the FRAC Normandie is currently shown in these three institutions and aims to be developed as a performance with 12 performers.

Founder of Lieuxcommuns TM in 2001, a work platform around graphic and printed art, Jocelyn Cottencin teaches at different French and international schools, and has been teaching at the Ecole Supérieure d’Art in Lorient since 2005.