1/ Space name / team name:
The Miyu Gallery
2/ Name and email of primary contact:
Pierre Baussaron - [email protected]
3/ Names of additional Space admins:
Delphine Duroy - [email protected]
4/ SuperRare username(s) of everyone involved with your Space:
@miyu_gallery
5/ Short bio of you and/or your team:
Miyu is one of the leading auteur animation production and distribution companies in the world. Miyu Productions stands out for its production of around 40 animated shorts, several of which have been recognized and awarded in the most prestigious festivals (Cannes, Berlin, Locarno, Venice…). Today, it develops and produces a portfolio of about twenty short films, and a more recent portfolio of about fifteen feature films & audiovisual projects. The two first animated features of the company will be presented at this year’s competition of the Annecy international animation festival, the biggest animation festival in the world.
You can watch our demo here : Miyu Production
Our activity of production and distribution of animated films allowed us to discover and work with virtuosos of the animated image from all over the world – we work with artists from France, Italy, Japan, Hungary, the U.S., Israël… However, they are not sufficiently recognized by the cinema world, and even less by the contemporary art world, as there are very few bridges between these worlds.
So, in continuity with our editorial line, and willingness to promote and showcase animation artists, Miyu has opened on April 23, The Miyu Gallery in the Marais district of Paris, at 101 rue du Temple. The Miyu Gallery is the first gallery in the World dedicated to contemporary animation.
Managing the Miyu Gallery are -
Emmanuel-Alain Raynal. Founder of Miyu – associated procucer – gallerist
After studying history and history of art and a master’s degree in film studies at the University Panthéon-Sorbonne Paris 1, he embarked on a career as a director and then producer.
After having founded a first production company, driven by the desire to defend a particular line and to develop animation projects, he founded Miyu Productions in 2009, which now has four studios in Paris, Angoulême, Valence and Arles. The company produces short films, audiovisual works and animated features.
Passionate about the visual arts and a collector, he has wanted to create the Miyu Gallery for many years, convinced that the plastic work of animators and animation techniques, too little known in the contemporary art world, have a significant potential for plastic and visual expression.
In 2015, he joined forces with Pierre Baussaron, with whom he co-founded several companies in 2016, some of them with other partners: Miyu Distribution, a company specializing in the distribution of short films, the Miyu Gallery, an art gallery dedicated to the promotion of the plastic work of animation directors, and Studio Miyu, which is intended to carry the group’s executive production activity.
Within Miyu, he is in charge of all the company’s networks - contact with institutions, producers, schools, authors and artists. He is in charge of new projects and the search for new authors and artists. He ensures the production strategy and the development of projects in collaboration with Pierre Baussaron.
In parallel to his activity as a producer and gallery owner, he is vice-president of the SPI (Syndicat des Producteurs Indépendants) in charge of the animation
Pierre Baussaron. Associate Producer- Galerist
After studying mathematics and management, Pierre Baussaron joined the Danone group in 2004 in organizational management and then in marketing. From 2010 he becomes independent and works as a management, strategy and communication consultant, through his company À Boire et à Manger, and as a partner in the company Liquid Liquid, specialized in the spirits sector.
In 2011, he founded Blast Production with 3 other partners, whose activity is focused on the production of institutional films. He then focused entirely on audiovisual production, and developed from 2012 several short films, and a series of short programs for television.
Passionate about drawing and comics since his childhood, collector of rare albums, he joined in March 2015 Emmanuel-Alain Raynal within Miyu Productions as associate producer, driven by the desire to produce animation projects, closer to his artistic sensibility.
Within Miyu, he manages the operational implementation of projects, the executive production activity, the organizational, administrative and financial strategy of the group. He ensures the production strategy and the development of projects in collaboration with Emmanuel-Alain Raynal.
Delphine Duroy. Gallery Director
After a career in mediation and management of cultural projects, Delphine Duroy became professionally involved with structures in the field of contemporary art and artistic production.
She is notably responsible for the Audi Talents gallery or more recently for the Pierre-Yves Caër gallery. In 2018, she co-founded iilim, a structure for the support and promotion of emerging artists, where she is in charge of development and partnerships.
In the spring of 2022, she joins Miyu as Director of the gallery.
6/ Website & Social Media Links:
miyu.fr/gallerie/en
miyu.fr/production/en
7/ Summary/manifesto of your Space (~500 words). What is your unique value prop / elevator pitch? What type of art will you focus on? How will your Space stand out among the crowd?
Miyu Gallery’s SuperRare space aims to become the place to go for digital animated works by animation artists, and to discover the animation talents of tomorrow.
Miyu Gallery is the first contemporary animation gallery in the world, and will represent the work of eclectic animation directors who are, in essence, multi-talented and multi-faceted. From the creation phase and beyond their works, they leave the framework of cinema to work in other mediums (traditional or digital drawing, painting, sculpture, installations, photos, projections…).
Miyu Gallery will therefore aim to promote and present to the public animated works by artists from all over the world, by:
- Presenting original works by artists from the world of animation
- Serving as a laboratory, opening our know-how in animation production, to support artists whose primary medium is not animation, but who would like to use it to produce a work or an exhibition
- To be the voice of animation in the art world, by showcasing the works of other artists
The particularity of Miyu, being also an animation studio, will also allow us to accompany the artists on the production of their works, the production of an animation film being generally long and expensive.
The Miyu gallery is both a physical gallery, opened a few days ago in Paris, and a digital gallery, which we hope will find its place on SuperRare.
Animation has long been a field of experimentation for artists, but animation directors have always struggled to have it recognized as an art form in its own right. Digital art offers animation an unprecedented opportunity to make a place for itself in the art world. Most successful digital artists like Pak or Beeple regularly use animation in their work. Yet, the “traditional” contemporary art world is still skeptical about NFT & animation overall.
Our ambition is to reconnect the two universes by a two-way approach:
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First, by helping bring artists to digital art, but also by bringing collectors who are not used to NFT to be interested in this form of collection, and to accompany them towards an investment in this sector. We will carry out in-depth work with the media and contemporary art critics, in particular through regular and committed press relations work with a communications agency, Pierre Laporte Communication, which accompanies us permanently in our activity.
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Secondly, by offering a voice to the NFT sector in the physical contemporary art universe, by exhibiting our artists expressing themselves in digital art, whether within our physical gallery in Paris or at contemporary art fairs such as Drawing Now, a contemporary art fair dedicated to drawing in Paris in mid-May, for which we will be selling several animated videos and their NFT.
Our space will exclusively propose animated works. Our particular position, because of our background, will allow us to propose a unique panel of works in a multitude of techniques: we will be able to propose works traditionally realized with drawing on paper, as well as 3D creations, or other more innovative or experimental techniques, such as animation realized with the help of artificial intelligence, neural transfer, or even traditional experimental processes of animation on photo paper.
8/ Describe you/your team’s experience curating and promoting artwork:
Miyu has a 13-year experience in the production of cinematographic works, the identification of talented artists with a singular approach.
The short film is, particularly within our activity and our vision of Miyu, a real formal laboratory which has been the heart of our action since the beginning. For us, it is a format in its own right, considering that the importance of the work is not defined by its duration. Françoise Sagan used to say: “Writing is like running after a fire with a bucket of water, and it doesn’t matter how big the bucket is”. It is also a format that is open to innovation, and oh so important for the development of the directors we work with.
We have developed an international production policy by offering authors from all over the world the opportunity to accompany them in the making of their films. Particularly in Japan, where auteur animation is very little supported, we have gradually started the production of 5 short films. One of them, Anxious Body by Yoriko Mizushiri, was made in partnership with the Towada Art Center in Tokyo and showcased in Cannes Festival’s official competition in 2021.
In line with this special relationship with the authors, all Miyu directors have permanent access to the studio, whether to work on projects that may or may not be produced by Miyu, as a playground to develop their visual approach.
We have accompanied our films to the world’s most prestigious film festivals such as Cannes, Locarno, Venice and Berlin. This year, two of our short films were in competition at the Berlinale, and one of them received an award. We will soon have 6 short films, 2 feature films and a video clip in competition at the Annecy International Film Festival, the largest animation festival in the world.
9/Describe you/your team’s experience organizing exhibitions, making art sales, running auctions, networking with collectors, etc:
Delphine Duroy, our gallery director, has ten years of professional experience
of professional experience in the arts and culture sector as a gallery manager (Pierre-Yves Caer Gallery, Audi Talents Gallery), production manager (Lieux Communs), project manager and exhibition curator. Her experience in public and private institutions has taught her to move within the art world networks, to maintain lasting relationships with collectors.
In 2018 she co-founded Iilim, an association that accompanies, distributes and produces
artists from the young creation in contemporary art.
10/ Are there new artists you’d like to bring into your Space in the first six months? What is your relationship to them?
We plan to work with 10 artists in the short term. We are already in contact with all of them. For some of them, we produce or have produced their films, short films or feature films. For others, we work exclusively with their work for the art world.
Sébastien Laudenbach
Director and animator, author of 8 animated shorts, including Journal, Vasco, Daphné ou la belle plante or Vibrato (made for the 3rd Scène-Opéra National de Paris), he made a name for himself with his feature film La Jeune fille sans mains (The Girl without Hands), produced by Les Films Sauvages, presented at Cannes, awarded at Annecy and nominated for a César award, which he animated entirely on his own.
Chicken for Linda!, his second animated feature, co-directed with Chiara Malta, is currently being produced by Dolce Vita Films and Miyu Productions. At the same time, he is developing his third feature film, Prends garde à toi ! a spin-off of Carmen produced by La Garde Montante and Folivari.
Sébastien Laudenbach is a versatile artist, designing film posters, credits, notably for Emmanuel Mouret, music videos and a cover for Dominique A… He has been collaborating since 2014 with the poet Luc Bénazet, directing animated films-of-poetry for the magazine Numéro Zéro and has been teaching at EnsAD (Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs) since 2001.
A founding member of Ouanipo (Ouvroir d’Animation Potentielle), he has performed various live animation pieces, notably at the Maison de la poésie and the Cinémathèque Française.
For Drawing Now, he proposes to create a ghostly universe, using cryptokinography, conceiving a figurative animation from drawings that are not: phi effect, camouflage, iconic reduction are some of the ways to answer this constraint. The result is a fluid movement from suggested forms, like an impalpable presence, that of a woman of today, Anna.
Vergine Keaton
Born in 1981, Vergine Keaton is a French director and visual artist who lives and works in Paris. Her projects are at the crossroads of cinema and visual arts.
After studying graphic design and cinema, she directed her first animated short film, Je criais contre la vie, ou pour elle in 2009. The film has been presented in a hundred festivals including Cannes in the ACID selection.
She experimented with mapping and 3D in her next film, Marzevan, and her third film The Tasmanian Tiger, also produced by Sacrebleu Productions, was selected in the official competition of the Berlin Film Festival 2018, and then presented in many festivals around the world. She is currently developing her first animated feature at Iliade et Films around a single battle set in a small town during the Italian Renaissance.
Since 2016, she has also been creating multi-screen installations and working on the spatialization of her films, whether in Times Square in NY, at the Centre Pompidou Metz, at the Maison de la Poésie in Paris, at the Alliance Française in New York or at the Hors-Piste festival at the Centre Pompidou. In 2020, she collaborated with the conductor Laurence Equilbey by directing the short film Agnus Dei, around the work of Samuel Barber, for Arte Concert.
Vergine Keaton creates her animations from pre-existing documents (paintings, engravings, drawings from classical and popular culture) from which she takes details in order to create new images, both familiar and unique. She is interested in the evocative potential of these images belonging to our collective memory and their capacity to reinvent themselves.
Boris Labbé
Boris Labbé was born in 1987 in Lannemezan (Hautes Pyrénées). He lives and works between France and Madrid. He studied at the École supérieure d’art des Pyrénées, site of Tarbes, then at the École de cinéma d’animation d’Angoulême until 2011. Afterwards, the artist did several residencies: Casa de Velázquez in Madrid, HEAR - Haute école des arts du Rhin in Strasbourg, CICLIC - Région Centre-Val de Loire in Vendôme, VIDEOFORMES residency in Yssingeaux, Tenjinyama Art Studio in Sapporo, Q21 program of the MuseumsQuartier in Vienna, the animation residency of the Cinémathèque Québécoise in Montreal.
His works have been shown in contemporary art exhibitions in France and abroad (Japan, United States, Canada, Spain, Croatia), screened in more than three hundred international film festivals (including Cannes, Clermont-Ferrand, Annecy, …), broadcast on television, or played in audiovisual concerts. In 2020, he collaborated with the choreographer Angelin Preljocaj and signed the video scenography of the show Swan Lake.
He has been collaborating since 2014 with Sacrebleu Productions for his work as a filmmaker. He is also represented by re.riddle gallery (San Francisco) and Miyu gallery (Paris). More recently he is collaborating with Bandini Films and VIDEOFORMES to flesh out the project Monade (2020).
His latest short film La Chute was in the Special Session selection at the 57th Critics’ Week of the 2018 Cannes Film Festival.
Based on drawing, Boris Labbé’s seemingly minimalist work is characterized by hybridization, combining the use of digital moving image techniques with those specific to animated film. This approach blends tradition and innovation, improvisation and probability calculation, painting and cinema, music and dance, bodies and animals, plants and minerals. Boris Labbé creates a cinema without direct filming, without actors, without characters, without dialogue, and whose narrative, often dilated, remains open to the interpretation of the spectator.
Sawako Kabuki
Sawako Kabuki was born in 1990 in Tokyo, Japan. She graduated from Tama University of Art with a B.A. in graphic design and completed her M.A. after working as an assistant director for a pornographic video company.
Her films have been selected and awarded at numerous international festivals in over 20 countries, including Annecy, Ottawa, Zagreb, Rotterdam, Sundance and SXSW.
A natural progression from the cheeky and comical drawings Sawako has been making for the past few years, her recent work that will be exhibited at the gallery in the form of drawings and animations depicts butts on an even smaller scale than before. She is not afraid to use large amounts of nudity and sexual references to communicate her ideas, and she continues to address many taboo subjects in Japanese society through her work.
Sawako Kabuki also plays with new color palettes, using many more reds and blues, a combination that has fascinated her since she was a teenager: “As bulls hate and attack the color red, certain color combinations have always excited me… like magenta and cyan, red and blue, yellow and blue, peach and sky blue and so on. I use them according to my mood” she says.
I’m Late, her latest animated film produced and distributed by Miyu, focuses on the experiences of women who don’t get their period or who are late in their cycle.
These first 4 artists will all be present at our exhibition at Drawing Now, from May 17 to 22, 2022, where we will connect the digital works to the Cryptoart world by selling the video works in NFT.
Afterwards, we will work in the short term with :
Mattis Dovier
After studying graphic design at ENSAAMA, ESAD and Gobelins, Mattis Dovier turned to traditional turned to traditional animation, drawing his influences from underground manga and Japanese animation of the 80s and 90s. He mixes the organic of drawing and the digital of pixel art to develop an imaginary that is both dark and playful, echoing the aesthetics of 8-bit video games, the first digital drawing software and contemporary gif culture.
Ulysse Lefort and Martin Wiklund
Plural artists, graduates of the Pennighen School of Design, Martin Wiklund and Ulysse Lefort are at the same time composers, DJs, videographers and animators. They have always worked on hybrid techniques in animation, exploring digital collage and visual glitching. More recently they have explored neural transfer techniques, allowing to create new images, and are among the only artists to use these techniques in the animation world. After their film Danse Exquise, selected at the Annecy festival in 2019, they will release in 2022 their next video Bruit Rose for the band Pink Noise.
Nikita Diakur
Nikita Diakur studied animation at the Royal College of Art in London. He now lives and works as an independent director and producer in Leipzig, Germany. The trademark of his films is an animation method based on computer simulation and randomness, allowing for spontaneity and mistakes.
The Russian-born artist has won several awards for his latest projects “Ugly” and “Fest” and participated in film festivals all over the world. With his innovative narratives, he questions formats and styles. His stories are about bizarre characters and unpredictable physics. The result is a surprise. He regularly gives lectures and workshops, e.g. at the Playgrounds Festival or at the Berlin Academy of Arts. He was also part of the Artists-in-Residence programme at Q21 in Vienna and is a member of the European Film Academy.
Alice Saey
Alice Saey is an animator who travels between Paris and Rotterdam. After studying at the Arts Décoratifs de Strasbourg, she animated a sea of naked women, a dance of Egyptian geese and a choir of volcanoes in the clips She’s Young (Shaking Godspeed), Happy (Mark Lotterman) and Careful (Jo Goes Hunting) which won international awards. For her next short film Flatastic, written by Léa Perret and produced by Miyu, she stages a chaotic ballet of manta rays and flattened humans.
Mihai Grecu
Mihai Grecu is a native of southern Transylvania in Romania, born in 1981 in the town of Sebes. Oscillating between cinema, video art and CGI creations, his singular imagery implements, in a dehumanized atmosphere, dreamlike visions crossed by political allegories, parasitic objects, modified architectures and character-symbols. In 2014 he was awarded the prestigious artistic residency Q214 in Vienna, Austria. His work has been shown in numerous film festivals (Rotterdam, Nouveau Cinéma Montréal…) and exhibitions (“Dans la nuit, des images” at the Grand Palais, “Labyrinth of my mind” at the Cube, “Studio” at Galerie Les filles du Calvaire, etc).
We already work with each of these artists, either through the Miyu Gallery, but also for some of them through Miyu Productions, producing their films, they’re all on board to be part of Miyu’s space.
11/ Are there any artists already in the CryptoArt space that you are planning to work with? Have they committed to participating yet?
Of the 8 artists listed above, three are already involved in the Crypto-art spaces, particularly on SuperRare where they have each already sold NFTs:
Sawako Kabuki sold her first NFT “Salted Tongue” in November 2021
Nikita Diakur has been selling the NFTs “Fall”, “No Parachutes”, “Be a winner!” and “Renault 4 ()” for about 1 year.
Mihai Grecu is regularly selling NFTs on various platforms, on Ethereum / Tezos blockchains.
The three of them have confirmed their desire to be represented by Miyu Gallery.
12/ If selected, how soon could you launch your first exhibition?
We could launch our first exhibition very quickly, as an extension of the Drawing Now Art fair, for which we will be ready within 2 weeks. We’re working with Sawako Kabuki on a full exhibition to be released in September 2022. We’re discussing with Mattis Dovier and Martin Wiklund/Ulysse Lefort around digital exhibition from the Summer 2022.
Nikita Diakur’s next project “Down Only” should be ready in 2023.
Please provide any additional details about how you plan to operate this Space; e.g. cadence of releases, auction strategy, number of artworks, other ideas for promoting your art and artists, etc.
We plan to have 6 digital exhibitions per year in our SuperRare space, in parallel with our 6 exhibitions in the physical gallery. Similar to our work in our physical gallery, we want to represent only original work, created specifically for the gallery space.
We will promote the artists’ works at the same time during these exhibitions, which will result in drops of several works at the same time, between 3 and 6 works per exhibition. But we will not refrain from regularly unveiling various works of our artists, between several exhibitions, depending on their will and their production.
Some of our exhibitions in the physical gallery and in contemporary art fairs will also lead to NFT sales. In 2022-2023 we will participate in the following contemporary art fairs:
- Drawing Now
- Art Paris
- Barcelona Loop
We will tend to propose fixed prices for each work, depending on the artists, their background and experience, but also on the works themselves, according to the difficulty of production they imply.
All of our activity will be supported by the work of our press agency - Pierre Laporte communication, which accompanies us annually, is very well established in the art world in France, and will communicate about our artists and their exhibitions at each new event.
13/ How do you plan to structure commission rates for the artists who release in your Space?
We will structure our commissions as follows:
5% for the SuperRare DAO
20% for Miyu Gallery
75% for the artist
In the case of a co-production of the exhibition with the artist, we will divide the revenue in proportion to the gallery’s contribution.
14/ To you, what is the importance of NFTs as a medium/technology? Where do you see the NFT and CryptoArt space in five years?
We are convinced that NFTs allow for a global revolution in the world’s exchange system, with incredible potential for the independence of the various players from the monetary system and the world of finance in general.
The versatility of NFTs in their different applications, especially in the governance of organizations, but also the capacity for actors in many markets, starting with the art market, to become independent of the historical actors.The progressive, community-based dynamic that is being created is a tremendous hope in the face of control by the system, censorship, and the market.
To focus more specifically on NFT and Cryptoart, we believe that a revolution of artistic practices is at work, incredible exciting, but also moving and naturally unstable. We are thrilled to embrace this movement and accompany it so that it takes the place it deserves. It allows video and animation artists in particular to find a place in a market that has been difficult for them to access until now.
We believe that in 5 years the NFT and CryptoArt market will be structured around probably fewer, solid players, among which we have no doubt of SuperRare’s continued success. The codes of the sector will probably have evolved, a the NFT Market will probably be changing less fast, but the diversity and richness of the works produced should keep being extremely high, as there is no barrier for new players to come and offer their artistic propositions.
We believe that a much greater number of artists will use NFTs. Cryptoart will be better known by the public, and recognized as a practice in its own right, and communication between physical and digital art will have become natural. We sincerely hope to play a really active role in that movement.
14/ If your Space were a cocktail or a dish, what would it be and why?
We could be a coffee. A drink that surprises you when you drink it for the first time, by its bitterness, which is not necessarily easy to access. It remains simple in its proposition, direct and strong. And which expresses an infinite number of nuances, subtleties, a depth that can be explored for a lifetime.
Anything else you’d like the community to know/consider?
Yes, we’d like to add a word about environment –
Today, there is little mention of NFTs in the media that does not address their ecological impact. However, there is very little information today on the specific carbon impact of NFTs.
It seems essential to us, at a time when everyone must question their consumption and how to reduce it, to analyze the impact of NFTs in terms of carbon footprint, and to develop the most virtuous approach possible in this regard. This approach also seems to us to be essential to support the progress of the NFT sector as a whole with the public.
Echoing the article published a year ago by SuperRare - No, CryptoArtists Aren’t Harming the Planet | by SuperRare Labs Team | SuperRare 💎 | Medium - we would like to launch, together with Workflowers, a company specialized in environmental analysis, a holistic study on the impact of NFTs, both directly and indirectly (through the impact of blockchain itself). We obviously want to share the findings of such a study with the entire art world and more.
We are thinking, in the short term, about integrating a carbon offset component to a smart contract, which would direct a portion of sales towards carbon impact reduction solutions, blockchain optimization, or other virtuous approaches.
*We’re thrilled to get a chance to be part of SuperRare, and have the opportunity to fight for the artists we love, and a better/rightful presence of animation in the art world, please consider voting for us !
