Yvan Guillo, aka Yvang, aka Samplerman is a French cartoonist/collagist born in 1971. He started publishing his comics in numerous fanzines in the early nineties and took part in micro published collective projects. Around 2009, he started a shared Tumblr blog “zdnd”, la zone de non-droit (the no-go zone) in order to show some side projects. The digital collages of forgotten and public domain american comics labelled “Samplerman” started there, with continous commissions for comics, illustrations, Sleeves for LP Record from many countries. Samplerman was awarded the Prix de l’EESI in 2019 during the Angoulême festival. He’s currently working on several forthcoming exhibitions, books and mini comics. He lives and works in Brittany, France. Some of his books are Miscomocs Comics, Fearless Colors, Bad Ball and Anatomie Narrative.
France
Killoffer (France)
Patrice Killoffer was born on 06/16/66 in Metz, France, to a worker father and a housewife mother. After a childhood between corons, rapeseed fields and steel factories in the Pays Haut de la Meurthe and Moselle, in Lorraine, he was admitted in 1981 to the Duperré school of applied arts, in Paris, from which he was asked insistently to resign in 1985. Since then, he has done a lot of illustrations for the press, publishing and advertising, he co-founded a comic book publishing house, as well as the magazine Mon Lapin Quotidien, and produced, alone or accompanied, some comic books. It also happens to be exhibited for all to see by the Anne Barrault gallery.
David Desrimais (France)
David Desrimais is a publisher and a digital expert based in Paris, France.
Founder and director of JBE Books (Jean Boîte Éditions, since 2011), he publishes books in the digital age, in the fields of arts, humanities and poetics. Conceived hand-in-hand with worldwide artists and authors, all the books are shaped for International distribution (now in 15 countries). In the academic field, David Desrimais is committed to several programs and diplomas for the teaching of Editorial Creation in the 21st Century. He notably intervenes at Duperré (Paris) and at the University Clermont Auvergne (UCA) where he co-directed from 2016 to 2022 as associate professor and associate researcher the Master’s degree in Publishing (CELJG). Former Head of Digital Projects for the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain (2007-2017), David Desrimais regularly works as an expert and director of digital projects for cultural and scientific institutions, as well as for private clients (Mobilier national, IDDRI-Sciences Po, Mairie de Paris, Cartier, Google Arts & Culture…).
Franck Leibovici (France)
Franck Leibovici is a poet and artist whose work is based on found documents (texts, videos, sounds) usually turned into scores. Leibovici’s devices are labelled “artworks-tools” as they are intended to be performed both as artworks and instruments for practitioners whose expertise is situated outside the artworld. Leibovici’s tools have been applied to various contexts : geopolitical conflicts, international criminal law (at the international criminal court) or, in lighter moments, art history and love encounters. His last publications include de l’amour (jbe books, 2019), low intensity conflicts – un mini-opéra pour non musiciens (éd. mf, 2019), des opérations d’écriture qui ne disent pas leur nom (éd. questions théoriques, 2020), exercices (aoc, 2022) and what time is it ? stories about painting, shadows and the sun (jbe books, 2023).
Hippolyte Hentgen (France)
Hippolyte Hentgen is a duo of artists, composed of Gaëlle Hippolyte and Lina Hentgen. Gathered under this fictitious name thought as a sphere of sharing and a tool of distancing of the notion of author, the two artists explore a territory of research mainly directed towards the image. If their practice is anchored in drawing, they also venture into other fields of representation, such as performance, set design, film and sculpture. By appropriating the codes of comics and press cartoons, they multiply the tones and references and revive a mass visual culture by sliding and grafting. Drawing from art history as well as from popular culture, they seize iconic images inscribed in the collective memory and restore them in an immense protean and composite collage of great stylistic freedom.
Bastien Vivès (France)
Born in Paris, Bastien Vivès spent his childhood drawing with his younger brother. He took live model classes from the age of 10 years. Vivès studied Applied arts at the Institut Sainte Geneviève Paris (6th) and three years at the Penninghen School of Graphic Arts in Paris and eventually Gobelins School, still in Paris, where he studied animation. He achieved success first on the internet (on the Catsuka forum) under the pseudonym “Chanmax” with the character Poungi la Racaille. His first album, Elle(s), published in 2007 by Casterman under the KSTR label and when he was 25 years old, in January 2009, Vivès received the Angoulême Festival Revelation Award for his album A Taste of Chlorine (Le goût du chlore). In 2010 and 2011, he participated of the online drama Les Autres Gens, written by Thomas Cadène, drawing seven episodes. In 2013, he published the “French manga” series Lastman, together with Michaël Sanlaville and Balak.
Morvandiau (France)
Born in 1974, Morvandiau is a comics artist and a press cartoonist. He started developing his art next to his older brother, the author Tanitoc, and gets into business early in the 90s, publishing his work in fanzines, in the cultural and political press in France (The Inrockuptibles, Rock & Folk, Bakchich, Marianne…) as well as in artistic reviews (The electric eye, Scrap, Jade, Ego Comme X, Rabbit, Le Tigre, MLQ…). Morvandiau is the co-founder, in Rennes, of the Festivals Périscopages (2001-2011) and Spéléographies, biennale des ecritures (since 2014) and he is also active as a journalist, an editorial adviser (Le Monde Diplomatique en bande dessinée, 2010) and a teacher at the l’Université Rennes 2. In 2016, he began researching his arts thesis entitled The Art of Smuggling? A cartography of the francophone alternative comics (1990-2015).
Guillaume Dumora (France)
Guillaume Dumora is a bookshop keeper and his glorious shop, Le Monte-en-l’air is a literary hybrid, a triple-purpose space with a ‘curiosity shop’ for atypical and disturbing novels, a gallery where different painting and photos are hung every three weeks, and the main ‘librairie’ where you’ll find everything from graphic novels to classic literature and contemporary poetry.