Deep garden is a serie of underwater photographs taken underwater between Trebeurdun and Plougasnou on the north coast of Brittany.
This area is the favorite exploration ground where I collect most of the seaweed that feeds my work.
It is also the richest marine environment in Europe for the growth of macro-algae because of its geographical location, at the border of the warm waters of the South Atlantic and the colder waters of the Channel and the North Atlantic.
(Schöpf refers to the term Schöpfen (scooping), which describes the act of crafting paper).
As part of the Algae Paper Project, a multi-year artistic research series on algae and its environment, Julien Villaret and Julie Sorel present Green Schöpf, a workshop inspired by the culinary culture of Laos, artisanal papermaking and ceramic art.
Join us for a Kaipen making workshop in the temporary seaweed lab! (Kaipen is a Laotian riverweed chip made using the traditional paper-making technique):
Friday afternoon 11th nov 4pm-8pm
and a happening-tasting with the artists on:
Saturday evening 12th of nov. from 6pm
Book release and exhibition - April 2024
Einbuch.haus, Berlin
The unique artist’s book edition, Algae Paper from Finistère, consists of papers made with seaweed harvested on the Brittany coast, and bound by Julien Villaret. Each book has different colors of paper sheets – green, red, or dark brown – representing each family of macro-algae. Species like Ulva, Porphira (Nori), Dulse or Kombu have been used in the production of these sheets of paper. The book lets the seaweed paper extend freely beyond its format, turning it into a living, organic object, ready to begin colonizing its immediate environment. This book-making process is also a tribute to the work of the first amateur marine botanists, the Crouan Brothers, who began collecting and documenting seaweed in Brittany in beautiful handmade books (Exsiccata) at the end of the 19th century.
In conjunction with the book release, einBuch.haus unfolds his journey by featuring Algae Paper to complete the presentation of this edition and provide a comprehensive overview of Julien Villaret’s multifaceted approach: the Algae Photochromatics series presenting several species of seaweed photographed on a color background, compositions made of different Algae Paper sheets exhibited as abstract paintings, and samples of objects collected on the foreshore during seaweed harvesting.
Algae Paper from Finistère, 2024
10 sheets artist book, 15 x 21 cm
Ulva, Asparagopsis, Kelp, Goëmon & Cellulose pulp
Edition of 10 + 2 AP
Installation presented during Tootem#2, a collective exhibition curated by Société Sauvage in les Instants Chavirés, Montreuil (Fr), 2014
After a few months exposed in the sun, printed objects, images or documents can get old, like any other living corpse. Their color and brightness might fade and make them look bleached and tired like an old man. It’s a well-known phenomena in the graphic industry who has elaborated a wide range of laboratory tests to measure the resistance of the printing inks.
Minimal Zenith is a proposition to play with this statement, by placing printed documents in a sculptural environment that will artificially accelerate the ageing process. In this installation we’ll meet stainless modules with geometric forms, reflected food packagings, samples of different rasters, old pop-singers, DDR relics, a lot of light and a mysterious grey scale poster silk-printed on paper. More than a young vibrant color image, it is the one who leads in this dance.
Minimal Zenith: 3 stainless modules + a lamp,
various printed documents exposed in the light,
2 silk-screened poster (21 ex.)
Algae Photochromatics makes the portrait of several seaweed species of the Brittany north shore in France: Dulse, Ulva, Kombu, Fucus, Bifurcata, Goémon, Kelp etc… They all grow in the region around Locquirec, where the warm waters of the atlantic ocean meet the cold waters of the Channel sea. That creates the optimal conditions for the algae to grow and makes this place one of the most adapted in Europe for their development.
Every algae sample is photographed above a color background, that is placed in a shooting tank full of water, and built specially for the occasion. The impression is then that the algae floats in the deep, whose color changes constantly in a chromatic game with the color of the frame.
Algae Photochromatics, 2020.
Several Inkjet printed photographies on Hanemühle paper, each presented in a 40 x 40 cm painted frame. Edition of 3 + 1 A.P.
(price on demand)
Algae Lamps are light objects who use green Algae Paper sheets as lampshades to diffuse a surrounding green light.
An original LED lamp mounted on a metal structure produce the light who is then filtered by the Algae Paper. It spreads a green light which slowly tends to get whiter after several weeks of using, because the algae looses its chlorophyll pigment when longer exposed to the light.
The Lampshade made of Algae Paper can easily be replaced by removing some little magnets pinned on the lamp structure. The light intensity is then evolutive and makes this object change in the time like a living organism.
Two models of these lamps have been produced in micro edition of 6 and 3.
Algae Paper Lamp (Pendant version), 6 ex. :
Metal, aluminium, wood, paper & algaepaper + LED light.
white, dark-green or emerald, 62(L) x 18(w) x 18(h) cm
Algae Paper Lamp (Table lamp version), 3 ex. :
Metal, aluminium, wood, paper & algaepaper + LED light.
white, dark-green or emerald, 70 (h) x 62 (L) x 30 (w) cm
(price on demand)
Algalphabet Bifurcaria is a typeface inspired by the Bifurcaria Bifurcata, a seaweed species found in the waters of Molène Island, on the north coast of Brittany (Fr).
This project is a collaboration with Jonathan Shi, a typograph from Taiwan.
Algalphabet silk-screened booklet
limited ed. 99 ex.
32 pages, 31,5 x 22,5 cm
Intertidal is an exhibition conceived for the Showcase gallery, a space located in a small window in downtown Grenoble, a stone's throw from the French Alps and more than 1000 km from the Breton coast.
The small space of the window conjures up the coastal space, that of the intertidal zone where the tide comes and goes twice a day, to let appear numerous animal and plant species that have inspired my work on seaweed for several years.
The exhibition is a graphic game between several printed images and objects in volume, produced in recent years and already exhibited for some individually, including Algalphabet, Stone Paper, Algae Mask, La couleur de l'onde, The moon is flat, etc...
Intertidal, from May 20 to July 03, 2022 at the Showcase Gallery, Grenoble (Fr).
Smooth Moiré, 2013
A Happening from Julien Villaret and Benjamin Martin.
Silk-screen printing with water ecological ink is nice... But using fruits and vegetables as ink for printing on paper is even funnier!! Smooth Moiré is an Happening during which we prepared some delicious fruit smoothies to be drank by the audience, and to serve as printing ressource to silk-screen posters with the rest of it. As in the printing industry, we need to combine 4 colors to get a color picture printed. That's the CMYK process!
On the smoothie Menu:
BLUE/GREEN: Baby Spinach, Parsley, Bananas, Apple juice & Spirulina
MAGENTA: Strawberries, Bananas, Rasberries & Acai Powder
YELLOW: Orange juice, Mangos & Bananas
BLACK: Mango, Spinach, Rasberries, Acai Powder & Spirulina
Limited edition of 35 GMYK posters printed with 100% Natural inks, 39,5 x 59,2 cm.
The Seaweed House was an exhibition who took place in my apartment during a week-end of november 2019.
Several works made of seaweed have been exhibited for the occasion: Algae Lamps, Algae Masks and other compositions…
My friend Arnaud Rivière, a bruitist musician from Paris, also gave a concert for the occasion and the guests were invited to enjoy a buffet with smoked maquerels and sardines while having a glass of natural wine.
The Seaweed House
23/24 nov. 2019 in Berlin
The following serie presents two versions of the Algalphabet typographic work conducted with designer Jonathan Shi in 2021.
The first poster presents an analog version of the font. It is made of seaweed fragments recovered from the foreshore, dried and meticulously selected to obtain each capital letter of the alphabet. The second poster presents its digital counterpart, drawn from the study of this seaweed, the Bifurcaria Bifurcata.
This font is downloadable and usable under Creative Commons license. More information here.
Algalphabet analogic Poster in oak frame.
72 x 102 cm, 1 ex.
Algalphabet sIlk-screen Poster in lacquered frame.
71,5 x 101 cm, 8 colours, 30 ex.
8 Moons is a serie of 8 silk-screen pictures representing the hidden side of the moon (originally taken by a satellite of the NASA in 2011). It's an artwork who plays with the idea of disappearance by using the printing medium in an inappropriate way.
By letting the silk-screen gradually clog by the ink drying in the mesh of the fabric (which must be normally regularly cleaned), it becomes more and more difficult to print sharply and thus to collect traces of the image to be printed. It finally results that the image of the moon totally disapears and merges completely with the blue background.
Temporality of the printing process is set in parallel with the lenght of the lunar cycle, which ends when the moon completely disappears from the surface of the paper.
8 Moons: 8 silk-screen prints, 2 colours each
3 ex. + 1 A.E., 42 x 59 cm, 2011
Stone Paper is a serie of 250 silk-screen posters, representing a very rare and ancient stone which is visible only in the the region of Bretagne on the west coast of France: the "schiste truffacé".
All images has been first photographied in the village of Locquirec (Fr) before to be transfered on silk-screen.
A selection of 60 pictures have been exhibited during La Passe, an exhibition in tête Berlin in nov. 2016.
Stone Paper : 21 different images, each 90 x 62 cm, printed 10 to 12 times with variation of white, grey, silver and black. Each print is unique, signed and numbered.
Algae Masks are modern artifacts made from seaweeds that have been collected in the region of North Brittany, in France. Seaweeds and algaes are very diverse there. More than 400 species have been listed since the 19th century on its shore.
Algae Masks are a part of the project Algae Paper that has been initiated in 2014 with the transformation of a green algae (the sea lettuce) into recycled sheets of paper. They are part of a fictive narration inspired by different primitive culture through the world (from Europe to Asia, Africa and the South Pacific), traditional celtic tales and ecoligical matters.
Algae Masks, all about 30 x 20 cm, from different types of green and red algae.
THE TOOLS - Exhibition in tête (Berlin) - 22-30/11/2014
With Astali/Peirce, Manon Bellet, Jean-Baptiste Bouvet, Bettina Bruder, Anna Chkolnikova, Guillaume Constantin, Robert Demol, Agathe Fleury, Satch Hoyt, Hervé Humbert, Camille Laurelli, Maximage, Pierre-Etienne Morelle, Benjamin Lee Martin, Bertrand Planes, Arnaud Rivière, Macarena Ruiz-Tagle, Daniel Seiple, Jaro Straub, Reijiro Wada.
Curated by Julien Villaret
Concert during the vernissage from Arnaud Rivière
The exhibition The Tools explores the mechanisms of artistic production with a presentation of objects and devices created specially by artists to make their own work.
These tools, which include machines, instruments, accessories, materials and technical processes are quintessential in the development of the artworks, but are generally documented aside from actual exhibitions, if at all. Rather they appear in workshops, as sketches in notebooks or sometimes only in the minds of the artists who created them.
By focusing on the artistic means rather than the artistic results, The Tools constructs a portrait of creative activity in which inventiveness, know-how and cunning are entailed in the words of philosopher Michel de Certeau : « a way of thinking invested in a way of acting, an art of combination which cannot be dissociated from an art of using »*.
* Michel de Certeau, « The practice of everyday life »
A while ago I had the idea to show Lithography stones with their image on it as pieces for themselves, and not only printing mediums.
After passing some time collecting stones, welding and painting metal bases, here comes the Litho tea tables, a serie of 3 tea tables from different height, size and pattern. Only for tea and print lovers!
Beatle Tea : 40 x 30 x 50 cm (H)
Not Bremse : 38 x 33 x 61 cm (H)
Vases : 27 x 33 x 49 cm (H)
Price on demand
Catalog of the exhibition The Tools, curated by Julien Villaret in tête Berlin in nov. 2014.
Silk-screen print, 70 x 100 cm, 50 ex.
The poster can be exhibited on the wall, or cutted and mounted as an exhibition booklet of 32 pages, from dimension 16,5 x 23,5 cm
Graphic conception & Print: Julien Villaret - Goofypress
Photographies: Ludovic Jecker
With the works of Astali/Peirce, Manon Bellet, Jean-Baptiste Bouvet, Bettina Bruder, Anna Chkolnikova, Guillaume Constantin, Robert Demol, Agathe Fleury, Satch Hoyt, Hervé Humbert, Camille Laurelli, Maximage, Pierre-Etienne Morelle, Benjamin Lee Martin, Bertrand Planes, Arnaud Rivière, Macarena Ruiz-Tagle, Daniel Seiple, Jaro Straub, Reijiro Wada
Bookshelv. is a combinative bookshelf system created to sort out and to exhibit books at the same time.
Four modules have been designed to provoke different scenarios and combinations, revealing hidden faces of the books and letting them receptive to unexpected eyesight... awaiting for the next read!
Bookshelv.: 4 different units, painted MDF on wheels.
90 x 33 cm, variable hights, 2013
Oyster Bar is a pop-up restaurant that serves oysters and natural wine every now and then in different places in Berlin. The micro-architecture is dismantable and can be installed everywhere on demand.
Around the structure are exhibited artworks and objects in relation to the marine environment like the Algae-Paper sheets or the Stone-Paper poster.
Oyster Bar is a art installation plus a social event that wanna think about food as an aesthetic experience.
Oyster Bar: wood panels, fabric, zinc, lamps.
2,40 m x 2,20 m x 2,40 m (L x l x H)
In october 2019, NASA has released a 3D map of the moon to be used by artists and creators.
This file exists as well in 2D and represents the topography of the lunar landscape in a planisphere format.
As a continuation of the previous works 8 moons and Black Moon Rising, I chose this picture to print a messing plate, whose particular gold aspect tends to blur the origin of the topography. Is it the earth, the sun or another planet of the solar system? No it’s the moon, with its dark face, as we have never seen before.
The Moon is Flat, 2019.
88 x 44 cm, ed. of 3 + artist proof
1 color silk-screen on brass plate
(price on demand)
An Anatopism (from the Greek ανα, "against," and τόπος, "place") is something that is out of its proper place. Thus, for example, an outrigger canoe would be an anatopism in ancient Rome. That could also be the case of these plastic stools, whose function is originally to serve as street-food restaurant seats in most south Asian countries, and in particular Viet-Nam.
Brought back in Europe, and mounted on some elevated metal structure, they can change function and become bar stools. Not the same place, not the same habits...
These limited edition stools have been designed for the Artist bar Detlef, who takes place occasionally in tête Berlin. They are also available on demand.
Anatopism : three different metal-welded basis with interchangeable plastic seating.
Seat : 23 x 23 cm - High : 63 cm, 77 cm or 88 cm
Patterns are minimal colorfull compositions made from Algae Paper sheets produced in the region of Locquirec (Fr) in between 2014 and 2017.
Different samples of Algae-Paper are exhibited in the frame (in which cellulose is mixed together with algae) revealing a specific aspect of the this recycled material.
Algae Paper Giant Frame : 2 different frames, museum glass, 108 x 142 cm each.
Black Moon Rising is a serie of 12 silk-screen prints, produced at the same time of the work 8 Moons, with the leftover ink saved from this session. Each marble effect is unique and reveal the trace of the printing process.
Black Moon Rising
Silk-screen print, edition of 12 ex.
Werkpapier 140g., 42 x 59 cm
Maple wood frame, black or blue
Algaeman is a litograph illustration that I realised in the printshop of the Bethanien in Berlin in 2018.
Each print is numbered and signed and presented in a 3 colour custom frame.
Algaeman, one colour Litograph : 24 x 30 cm, 7 ex.
Mille-Feuille is a project carried out in-situ in a small Berlin apartment which hosts once a month an exhibition of an artist, along with a tea-time moment around the cake of his choice (Sonntag project). Curators from Sonntag (April Gertler and Adrian Schiesser) therefore propose a social sculpture and an aesthetic event that puts in relation artists and spectators in a domestic interior around an artwork and a piece of cake.
My proposal for this project, Millefeuille, tried to consider the architectural context in which the exhibition took place and its social aspect through the tea-time moment. For that, I decided to rip off and to recycle a part of the tapestry of the apartment into handmade blank new sheets of paper and then to use some cake moulds to produce imprints from these raw material.
The result of this process is to be seen as fragmentary paper objects exposed in the apartment, some kind of archaeological remains of the residence, refering as well to the social moment of the exchange of food (cake) that took place in the house.
Mille-Feuille : 3 sheets of recycled raufaser, 29,5 x 49,5 cm + 15 imprints from cake moulds in recycled raufaser, 2012.
Typologies is a scenographic presentation of the work Algae Paper in a surface of 1 square meter.
It puts together several elements that constitute the environnemental background where the Algae Paper sheets are produced.
This installation was presented for the first time in July 2017 at Missread Berlin, an artfair dedicated to the international publishing practices.
Typologies: silk-screen printed MDF plate, metal rods, Algae Paper sheets, dried urchin shells, schist stone mounted on a rotative axis.
HamacBook is an unusual hammock made of 35 books attached together with hemp rope. It's possible to lie on it, rest ans read at the same time. More than a display unit for the book, it presents the printed matter as a layer to chill out...
Hamacbook : 35 catalogs "Elshopo Cabinet", hemp rope, wood sticks. 320 x 120 cm, 2014.
La Passe – exhibition by Julien Villaret
19, 20, 21 November 2016 in tête Berlin.
La Passe (the Passage) is a fictional environnement created in the space of the exhibition room around elements brought from the Bretagne's coast (Fr), who have been worked and transformed in dfferent ateliers in Berlin. Ecological concerns and aesthetic matters are gathering in this project during 3 days from the 19th to the 21st of November 2016. In between both rooms comes a special Oyster Bar. Here are available 300 « huîtres creuses n°2 du Dourduff » freshly brought from the bay of Morlaix, in Bretagne.
Exhibited works:
Stone Paper is a serie of 22 views of rocks surrounding the algae collecting spot near the Chemin de l’île verte in Locquirec. Each picture silk-printed in 10 ex. with variations of black, white, and silver.
8 moons is serie a silk-screen print representing the earth satellite who plays an essential role in the organisation of tides and stream. This image is showing the hidden side of the moon (originally taken by a satellite of the NASA in 2011) and plays with the idea of erasure through an inappropriate use of the silkscreen medium.
Algae Paper Branch, is a sculpture featuring a colony of Algae Paper sheets, once collected and recycled into paper, as the dangerosity of this algae comes with the repetition of its flowing on the beaches (they can then start the fermentation that produces the deadly sulfur of hydrogen).
11,4 cm is a silk-screen print representing the mesuring tape I used during all my assigments and jobs in art galleries and museums from 2003 to 2013.
Digital scale in centimeters was deliberately erased to leave visible only the abstract pattern printed on the metal strip, made of geometric lines and splashes of color where appears no further information.
11,4 cm : 4 color silk-screen (CMYK)
64 x 100 cm, 20 ex.
Verkehrte Welt is an offset printed poster graphically based on a story found in a german Walt Disney's comics.
In that story, Mickey's friend Goofy runs a printshop and has in important work to do but nothing really goes the right way… Verkehrte Welt is a transposition in reality from a "goofy" way to work: mixing inks and solvent randomly in the press, printing twice on the same sheets, let the machine get dirty and print again…
Result is a serie of 160 posters, all special and unique.
160 posters, Offset black and different other mixed colors, 46 x 68 cm, 2011.
(price on demand)
Algae Paper is an ongoing project which uses the green lettuce, an algae species from the north Bretagne shore as an esthaetic ressource to develop some experimental paper sheets, printed materials and sculptures in an immersive discourse around art and ecology.
First experimentations with the algae started in 2014. Since then, more projects have occured like the edition of the Algae Paper Booklet in December 2015, La Passe exhibition in November 2016 and the presentation of Topologies, a micro-installation at Missread Art Book Fair 2017 in Berlin.
Few words on the project Algae Paper :
Since decades, intensive farming led to a massive pollution problem on the beaches of Brittany, the western part of France. Nitrates rejection in rivers slowly end up in the sea by the stream, and create a development and proliferation of a green algae: the sea lettuce.
In summer, this algae comes tide after tide to cover most of the coast beaches. More importantly, it rejects a toxic gas, the Mercaptan, a derivative of sulfur of hydrogen, which can be lethal for mankind and animals.
Lots of ecological associations condemn this situation and face the agriculture lobbies to force the government and the authorities to take radical measures. The change of the production scheme for pork breeding is the key. But the economic situation is so sensitive in the region that nobody wants to take the risk to start a conflict with farmers.
Therefore, several alternative exist in addition to trying to change this process in agriculture. The main idea would be to recycle this parasite and transform it into something useful. All around the world, the transformation of different type of algae into raw material for alimentation, cosmetic, and alternative to plastics has become more and more popular throughout the years. From Namibia to Zanzibar and from Japan to Brittany, seaweed agriculture becomes an important economic actor, creates employment and favorise development.
The project Algae Paper started a few years in Locquirec, France led to the transformation of sea lettuce into recycled sheets of paper. So far, results are very interesting, since the combination of algae and real paper allows to keep properties of a normal piece of paper’s elasticity. We can fold it, rip it off and write on it. This new material also possesses aesthetic qualities in terms of colors, transparency, touch and smell that can be exploited in a lot of different domains.
Algae paper is an artistic experimentation which tries to play with the environment and create links between nature and culture. It’s as well a project who explores another solutions to interact with a tensed ecological and economical situation.
Designed as a staging area for the book, Ideal Reading #1 invites visitors to browse, read and copy books, documents and other printed matter from the personal collection of a dozen artists, graphic designers and print-workers established in Berlin.
From Paris to Berlin, the booksellers box, originally installed by the Seine, has represented for centuries a romantic and vagabond approach to books and is the starting point for this exhibition. In Berlin the boxes become a generic pattern ready to generate new forms. A bit further: a library, a workspace, and a copymachine. The stage is set, the show can begin...
Ideal Reading #1, an exhibition and a temporary copyshop took place in tête, berlin from the 02nd till the 10th November 2013 with Claude Cadi, Miki Kadokura, Sébastien Gindre, Andrea Rinaldi, Julie Sorel, Benji Martin, Steef van Lent, Julien Villaret, Bouquiniste la Vagabonde, Palefroi and Goofypress.
This Algae Paper series presents 5 versions of Algae Paper sheets, produced with green algae in the region of Locquirec (Fr) in between 2014 and 2017.
Different samples of the paper are exhibited in frame (in which cellulose is mixed together with algae) revealing a specific aspect of the this recycled material.
Algae Paper Frame : 5 different frames, museum glass, 43 x 44,4 cm each.
Produkte mit Musik is a music happening organised together by Matthias Mayer, Julien Villaret and Erik Kiesewetter in June 2015 in Berlin.
During only one night, the berliner projektraum tête was transformed into a Frisbeel playground and a disco dance-floor in which visitors could play, dance and have a drink in an improvised cocktail-bar.
DJ Sporty Jack plays the records, Goofypress transform them into Frisbeels. In the middle of the space, the playground is set to receive Frisbeel players. People are free to move around, listen to music and check the covers of the exhibited vinyls selection.
An edition of 25 Frisbeels was produced during that evening.
FRISBEEL is an hybrid object in between the frisbee and the vinyl LP.
It can fly, be listened on your old turntable or be exhibited on your wall. It's shaped from a mould to the exact dimensions of a real frisbee, and its original sleeve is even recycled into a box to carry it.
The whole Frisbeel installation is a mobile press unit built from a vintage Saba turntable that can be displayed anywhere: in the street, in a venue or in a festival. It has been designed as an exhibition device for the parisian festival Sonic Protest in 2014, and since then exhibited in different places in Berlin and elsewhere.
Want to host the Frisbeel installation in your venue? Contact us for more informations.
Thx for your visit!
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