Sophie Gastaud was born in Boulogne-Billancourt in 1961, Christian Joliff in Quimper in 1957. They met in 1981 at the Beaux-Arts in Paris, where they studied architecture in the same studio. There they learned drawing, painting and composition, as well as the pleasure of working together. After fifteen years of practicing architecture, they decided to devote themselves entirely to the visual arts, gaining greater freedom of expression.

A joint signature illustrates this new trajectory: SETCH

The discovery of the petroglyphs in the Vallée des Merveilles, in the Mercantour massif, was decisive: Why do these signs evoke such emotion when they don't speak to us, when we know nothing about their origin, their function, their meaning, their raison d'être?

From then on, their work has been geared towards blending simple, universal signs that span time and space. No representations, no stories told, no messages delivered, just a pictorial experience, a search for harmony and serenity.

Sculpture, discovered a few years ago through the cutting of steel, now fills a gap between painting and architecture. It extends the search for an archaic truth, something lost and buried that links us to one another.

What drives us is the desire to discover together - we, SETCH, i.e. Sophie AND CHristian - to grow together, to do together. Our project is therefore not simply a visual one, but a life project. Learning to think “we” rather than always “I”. It is the scattered elements of our intermingled lives that lead us to these images, these forms, which we in turn offer to the gaze of others.

Sophie and Christian live and work in Brittany and the Alpes-Maritimes.