Sébastien Desplat

Publisher, engraver and art printer Sébastien Desplat studied at École Supérieure d’Art in Cambrai, before specialising in the printed image from 2007. The following year, he began a collaboration with Centre d’Art de la Métairie Bruyère, a craft space centred on the transfer of knowledge and skills. In 2013 Desplat became director of programming at the centre. Also that year, he took the helm at Atelier R.L.D Paris, a publishing and printing company founded in 1973, where he continues his art publishing and printing activities with a focus on lithography, leather engraving and, more especially, contemporary printmaking – a technique he tailors to suit the artists with whom he works (including Etel Adnan, Miguel Barcelo, Pierre Charpin (2012), Camille Henrot, Nathalie Du Pasquier, Philippe Wiesbecker (2002) and Agnès b., M/M Paris). Sébastien Desplat is an editor at 3FPJ (3 Fois Par Jour), whose publications are a hybrid of comic strip albums, silent books and coffee table books.

During his residency, Sébastien Desplat conducted research into the contemporary printed image, visiting libraries, workshops and paper manufacturers, where he documented age-old techniques in quasi-scientific fashion, as well as studying manual woodblock printing as taught at the Takezasado studio. He then inventoried these gestures and skills as drawings, contributing to efforts made to prevent their disappearance. These drawings are themselves an illustration of the particular features of manually reproduced colours and shades.

Photos :
Portrait : Sébastien Desplat, ©Juan Jerez
Carnet de croquis, atelier rld,  ©Sébastien Desplat
Atelier Bingo, atelier rld,  ©Sébastien Desplat
Etel Dnan, atelier rld