Jérôme Sans

LagoAlgo is a private initiative opened in February 2022. Supported by CMR - operator of the Del Lago restaurant - in partnership with OMR as the space's cultural arm, ALGO in collaboration with Jérôme Sans as Artistic Director.

Led by the Emerige group, a new artistic and cultural project consisting of a place for contemporary art, a multiplex cinema and a hotel focusing on contemporary creation is currently being developed for the upstream tip of Seguin Island, which will benefit from one of the largest cultural concentrations in Europe. Jérôme Sans has been appointed artistic director for the prefiguration of the future contemporary art venue, designed by Catalan architects RCR Arquitectes, winners of the prestigious Pritzker Prize 2017. The venue, which will play a major role in this new cultural, social and economic dynamic, will embody within this exceptional island site the regeneration of the place of art as an inspiring space open to the world, in the image of today's creativity.

During the summer 2016, a number of works by Joan Miró were displayed at the heart of the shopping centre, thanks to a partnership with the Maeght Foundation located nearby.

From 2015 to 2017, Jérôme Sans was the co-artistic director of the Grand Paris Express cultural project. From 2017 to 2020, he was the designer and director of the artistic and cultural centre on the upper tip of the Ile Seguin, developed by the Emerige group. Since 2010 he has been artistic director of the urban redevelopment programme "Rives de Saône - River Movie" for the Lyon metropolitan area. Finally, since 2022, he has accompanied the development of LagoAlgo, a new hybrid living and cultural space in Mexico City.

From 2015, Jérôme Sans has been named artistic director of the art program of Polygone Riviera (Cagnes-sur-Mer, France), designed by the Unibail-Rodamco group and Socri. Polygone Riviera is the first open-air shopping centre in France and is also a cultural venue that focuses strongly on contemporary art, with eleven works by world-renowned artists placed on display at the centre (Ben, Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, Daniel Buren, César, Antony Gormley, Tim Noble & Sue Webster, Jean-Michel Othoniel, Pablo Reinoso, Pascale Marthine Tayou and Wang Du).

More than 10 international artists (Tadashi Kawamata, Jean-Michel Othoniel, Didier Faustino, Lang-Baumann, Elmgreen & Dragset, Le Gentil Garçon, Erik Samakh, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Meshac Gaba) have created site-specific works that will be installed permanently on the docks, contributing to the artistic highlight of the City of Lyon. The program has been created through a unique dialogue between architects, landscape architects and artists. The first phase of the program was completed in September 2013 as more than 17 km featuring a dozen works was implemented in situ. The next phases will be executed in 2014 and 2015.

More recently, Jérôme Sans completed a series of pocket books that incorporate interviews with artists and architects (Kendell Geers 2013, Ma Yansong 2012, Jannis Kounellis 2012), published by BlueKingfisher Lmt. He is currently working on a new volume about the American artist John Giorno.

He has also been the artistic director of a portrait of MadeIn Company (Xu Zhen) in his studio about a work made for the Biennale de Lyon 2013. This film, directed by Yang Bo (4.20 min) and produced for Zilli, is available on the company website and was screened alongside the work of the artist.

In 2012, he created the magazine L'Officiel Art of which he was the creative director and editor-in-chief until 2014.

In 2012–13, Jérôme Sans was creative director and editor in chief of the quarterly art magazine « L’Officiel Art », which is published by the Editions Jalou (Paris). By joining Les Editions Jalou to direct l’Officiel Art, he has bet on a new generation of art magazines in which art and artists narrate and encounter an interwoven world with fashion, style and all contemporary creative expressions. (« If art is a way of life, L’Officiel Art is its magazine »). L’Officiel Art aims to place artists at the centre of this cross-cultural debate. Jérôme Sans managed the first eight issues of the magazine. Eight artists have been invited to create a special cover : Daniel Buren, Farhad Moshiri, Bertrand Lavier, Yan Pei-Ming, Sterling Ruby, Marina Abramovic & Terence Koh, Loris Gréaud et Youssef Nabil.

Jérôme Sans is the co-author with Pierre Paul Puljitz of the documentary "Jonas Mekas, I Am Not A Filmmaker" (2012), which has been screened at numerous films festivals. He is preparing another film about the artist Kenneth Anger. He is currently preparing a new documentary dedicated to the American author, movie director & artist Kenneth Anger.

Since 2010, Jérôme Sans has been appointed as artistic Director of the 50 km reorganization of the Lyon docks around the Saône river, one of the most important program of permanent art in public space in Europe.

From 2008 to 2012, Jérôme Sans was the former director of the ground breaking Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing (UCCA), created by the Belgian collector Guy Ullens as the first private art center in China. Jérôme Sans has established a new economy for the art center to make the UCCA a place of reference for Chinese and international contemporary art (more than 67 exhibitions & 1500 events in 4 years). Jérôme Sans has collaborated with the architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte to redefine the structure of the center and adapt its Bauhaus style to flexible exhibition spaces. Jérôme Sans has been serving as an ambassador for Chinese contemporary art. He was devoted in the building of local and international profile of the UCCA with a world-class program of exhibitions, actively promoting Chinese contemporary art globally by fostering a vigorous dialogue between local and international artists and audience. He helped to bring a new economy to the art center, working with local and international partners. He is now a member of the Advisory Board of the UCCA.

Jérôme Sans also worked from 2006 to 2013 as Global Curator for Le Méridien Hotels & Resorts.

Jérôme Sans was from 2006 until 2008 the artistic director of the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, one of the most important art place in Europe, which he contributed to re-establish Baltic as the most creative place in UK. In a former flourmill, the Baltic is an international centre for contemporary art, it presents a constantly changing programme of exhibitions and events. Jérôme Sans has curated numerous solo shows there, as Kendell Geers, Subodh Gupta, Brian Eno, Kader Attia and Wang Du…

From 2006 to 2013, Jérôme Sans was Global Cultural Curator for Le Méridien Hotels & Resorts, a première in the hospitality industry.

He collaborated with Kiki Allgeier on the making of portrayals of the members of the creative community LM100 for Le Méridien Hotels & Resorts (between 2006 and 2013); and directed the movie « Breaking the silence » about AIDS in Mozambique, a special command from the UNICEF. For the website of Whitewall Magazine in 2012, Jérôme Sans made two video portraits of 3mn on the architect Ma Yansong and the painter Yu Hong.

Jérôme Sans is also the founder of the French electro pop band Liquid Architecture, created with Audrey Mascina. Their first album "Revolution is Over" was produced by the French record label Naïve in 2006. In 2009, as the first French band to be signed on the Chinese label, Modern Sky, they released their second album "I Love to Love."

In 2004 he joined forces with Bertil Scali, publisher and reporter, to launch Scali Editions, a publishing house dedicated to the publication of works around underground and current cultures (pop rock music, rap, electro, poetry, fiction, cinema, contemporary art, literature, notebooks, and eroticism) on neglected themes and subjects on the fringe or controversial such as the history of Gay Pride by Olivero Toscani or the Goth culture by Patrick Eudeline. Approximately 200 books were published between 2004 and 2008 with authors including Richard Bronson, Jonas Mekas, Virginie Despentes, Nina Roberts, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, Joey Starr, Bruce Benderson, Marie Darrieusec, and Brian Epstein.

He co-founded with Nicolas Bourriaud the Palais de Tokyo in Paris in 2002, which they directed until 2006, and then directed a private institution in China, the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) in Beijing, which he developed from 2008 to 2012. He is a member of the board of directors of UCCA.

He has curated many major exhibitions around the world, including the Taipei Biennial (2000), the Lyon Biennial (2005), Nuit Blanche in Paris (2006), and Li Qing at the Prada - Rong-Zhai Foundation (2019) in Shanghai, Pascale Marthine Tayou at the Clément Foundation, La Martinique, Erwin Wurm at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum (2020) and then at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade (2022). Most recently, he curated the installation Au cours des mondes by Alicja Kwade on Place Vendôme in Paris.

He is also the author of Araki on Araki, a collection of photos by the artist Nobuyoshi Araki, published by Taschen in 2000; In The Arab World Now, published by the Enrico Navarra Gallery in 2008; and a collection of photos by Hedi Slimane, Intermission 1, published by Pitti Immagine in 2002. In 2015, he also publishes, with Jean-Marc Decrop, the book China: The New Generation (Ed. Skira), on the emerging Chinese art scene. In 2016, he publishes with Marla Hamburg Kennedy Lipstick Flavor: A contemporary art story with photography (Ed. Damiani). In 2018, together with Laura Salas Redondo, he publishes the book Cuba Talks: Interviews with 28 artists (Ed. Rizzoli), revealing the dynamism of the contemporary Cuban art scene. In 2019, with Racing the Galaxy (Ed. Skira), catalogue of the eponymous exhibition in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan, which he curated with Dina Baitassova, he highlights the major and emerging figures of a emergent Kazakh art scene and its free spirit of nomadism, in dialogue with artists from other parts of the world.

Jérôme Sans was from 1999 until 2006 the co-founder and director of the acclaimed Palais de Tokyo (center for contemporary creation) in Paris (France) with Nicolas Bourriaud. This place became one of the most important art institution in Europe, contributing to the international large audience for a lot of French artists.

In 1998, Jérôme Sans published the reference book Au Sujet de about Daniel Buren (Flammarion) followed by two others on the artists Jonas Mekas (Just Like A Shadow, Steidl, 2000) and Chen Zhen (Les entretiens, Presses du Réel, 2003). He also authored Araki by Araki (a compendium of pictures made by Nobuyoshi Araki), published by Taschen in 2001, In The Arab World Now published by Galerie Enrico Navarra in 2008 and Intermission 1 (a collection of photographs by Hedi Slimane), published by Pitti Immagine in 2002.

From 1996 to 2003, Jérôme Sans was adjunct curator of the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design in Milwaukee, where he presented a serie of solo exhibitions of artist of the new generation of artists, shown for the first time in an institution in the US: Maurizio Cattelan, Pierre Huyghe, Erwin Wurm, Kendell Geers, Philippe Parreno, Barthélémy Toguo, Steve McQueen, Kimsooja, Joachim Koester, Annelis Strba, Lars Nilsson, Annika von Hauswolff...

Between 1994 and 1996, Jérôme Sans is adjunct curator of the Magasin 3 in Stockholm, Sweden, and from 1996 to 2003, of the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design in Milwaukee, United States. In 1997 and 1998, he is the art director and curator of two editions of the Printemps de Cahors event (France) : One Minute Scenario (with Dennis Hopper, Doug Aitken, Thomas Demand, Pierre Huyghe, Valérie Jouve, Ken Lum, Jonas Mekas, Jack Pierson and La sphère de l'intime. He co-curated with Nicolas Bourriaud, the Contemporary Art Biennial at the Musée d'art contemporain de Lyon (2005), titled L’expérience de la durée; and the Parisian Nuit Blanche in 2006, a public event for one night in the streets of Paris.

Jérôme Sans (born 1960) is a director of contemporary arts institutions, critic and curator, based in Paris.

Jérôme Sans, born on 2 August 1960 in Paris, is a French artistic director, director of contemporary art institutions, art critic, and curator.