Popular French band General Elektriks will take to the stage at the Espace Léo Ferré in Monaco this November.
After a tour that included 200 performances in France, it is Monaco’s turn to welcome Hervé Selters, aka General Elektriks, on Sunday 6th November for a concert of funk, pop and electro.
For this, one of the last dates on the tour, Selters will be joined by a number of artists who collaborated on his 6th album, including American rapper Lateef the Truthspeaker, Franco-Greek actress Ariane Labed, Brazilian singer Céu, rapper Quelle Chris and guitarist Jeff Parker.
Tickets start from €22. For more information, see our calendar by clicking here.
UPAINT, the one-of-a-kind street art festival hosted in the Principality of Monaco – has launched an open sale of the art that was crafted live in June, with all proceeds going to the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation.
UPAINT, formerly known as UPAW, is a unique art event to Monaco in which street artists showcase their talents for the general public over a number of days, creating a fun opportunity for them to witness the artists in action. At the end of the live performances, the art pieces are sold during a live auction curated by Artcurial. The net proceeds go to the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation to support projects that preserve our planet for a better future.
This year, UPAINT has renewed its partnership with invaluable.com to offer the option of acquiring the artworks from this year’s live show, which took place from 17th to 20th June. The sale will be open until 15th October 2022 and is a timed auction.
The public will be able to bid on 18 pieces created by the artists Futura, Bordalo II, Pez, Buff Monster, Dan Kitchener, The London Police, Bond Truluv, Spok Brillor, Alice Pasquini (Alicè), Dario Vella, Aura Aerosole and Oldhaus.
Proceeds from this sale will go to the Foundation’s Human – Wildlife Initiative, which aims to protect wildlife in rural and mountain areas neighbouring the South of France.
Jean-Luc Biamonti has told Monaco Life that he will leave his role as deputy chairman of SBM in six months’ time with a strong feeling of accomplishment, handing over a very different company than what he inherited.
The press had gathered on Friday 23rd September at the Monte-Carlo Bay Hotel and Resort to hear Jean-Luc Biamonti discuss the latest General Assembly with shareholders and the encouraging financial figures generated from a busy summer season.
And it was with great pride that the Société des Bains de Mer (SBM) deputy chairman recalled the €530.5 million profit for the 2021/2022 financial year, a 57% increase on the previous year, that had been revealed in March, adding that a bumper summer season could potentially lead the company to its most successful financial year yet.
But it was also revealed that this will in fact be Biamonti’s last few months as head of the company. Earlier in the day, SBM shareholders had been informed that he will be stepping down from the top job on 31st March 2023.
Jean-Luc Biamonti has a long history with the Société des Bains de Mer. In 1985, he became director of the company, before rising to Chairman of the Board of Directors in 1995. By 2013, he was entrusted with the operational reins of the group with the title of deputy chairman.
“When the Prince called me, the company was not doing very well,” Jean-Luc Biamonti told Monaco Life. “It was 2013 and SBM was losing money, for example the share price was €30. It is now somewhere between €90 and €100.”
It is certainly a very different looking SBM to what Biamonti inherited. Under his tenure, a number of very large and bold projects were realised.
“One-Monte Carlo was perhaps the biggest game changer for Monte-Carlo SBM because it has increased the revenue tremendously,” said Biamonti. “It made Monaco and Monte-Carlo more attractive, and the stores are delighted with their performance. There was also the renovation of the Hôtel de Paris, and now the expansion and renovation of the Café de Paris.”
He also oversaw one of SBM’s biggest gambles, an investment in the online gambling company Betclic, which this year paid off dividends after some tumultuous years in the red.
“Ultimately the industry turned around, and we sold it at a huge profit – €820 million, which has injected cash in SBM, well half cash, half shares, but the shares we can sell progressively.”
It is no doubt the end of an important era for the Société des Bains de Mer, Jean-Luc Biamonti and Monaco in general. Biamonti will be succeeded in April 2023 by Stéphane Valéri, who will step down as National Council President in a matter of days to become Chairman of the Board of Directors of SBM.
“I think I have turned the company around,” concluded Jean-Luc Biamonti. “I leave it in very good shape, and with a warm heart.”
National Council President Stéphane Valeri is stepping down in a matter of days to succeed Jean-Luc Biamonti in running Monaco’s largest employer, Monte-Carlo Société des Bains de Mer (SBM).
After weeks of speculation, the news was confirmed on Friday 23rd September during SBM’s General Assembly: there will be a change of guard in 2023.
National Council President Stéphane Valeri has accepted a proposal to join the Board of Directors of SBM and will leave his post as an elected official on 3rd October.
From 3rd April 2023, Valéri will step into the role of chairman of SBM, taking over from Jean-Luc Biamonti who has been at the helm of Monaco’s most important company for a decade.
SBM owns and runs Monaco’s most iconic institutions including the Hôtel de Paris, the Casino de Monte-Carlo, and the Hôtel Hermitage. It is majority owned by the State.
In a statement released by the National Council, Stéphane Valeri said that he has been “fully invested” since assuming the presidency of the National Council in February 2018.
“As I promised with my fellow National Councilors, we have restored the National Council to its just place within the institutions of our country,” he said. “Most of our commitments have been kept, in particular on housing for Monegasques, social issues, and even the positioning of the Assembly vis-à-vis the European Union.”
Valéri also pointed to his council’s work with the government on the Covid-19 Joint Monitoring Committee which “has worked in unity with institutions and unions to formulate proposals to protect the population, to support the economic actors and wage earners, and to prepare for the recovery.”
“It is therefore with the feeling of duty accomplished and the will to serve other interests of the Principality that I shall cease my duties…” he said.
Valéri added that he was looking forward “joining this great company to which my family and I have been very attached for several generations.”
Photo of Stephane Valeri by the National Council of Monaco
Monaco boosts blue economy with huge multi-million euro donation
The Constitutional Reserve Fund of Monaco has donated €10 million to London-based Ocean 14 Capital, an impact fund that focuses on the blue economy.
According to the World Bank, the “blue economy” is defined as the “sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, improved livelihoods, and jobs while preserving the health of ocean ecosystem”.
This eco-friendly approach to ocean usage is meant to encourage a multitude of positive results, such as helping to tackle climate change using resource-efficient, low-carbon shipping, fishing, and marine tourism practices as well as advocating marine renewable energy industries.
Monaco has long been actively campaigning for blue economy practices and has now found a partner in Ocean 14 Capital. Ocean 14 Capital, based in London, has just received a generous €10 million to support its end goal of financing sustainable solutions that improve the health of the seas.
Minister of Finance and Economy, Jean Castellini, says, “I believe this investment will enable Ocean 14 Capital to deliver the innovation needed to meet our climate and sustainability goals.
“The sustainable blue economy is now a key focus for us, and this is a rallying cry for start-up and scale-up marine innovators globally to come forward and help avert the crisis in our oceans and return them to a healthy, thriving state.”
The Monaco funds will assist in allowing Ocean 14 to invest in eight companies this year, with the idea to grow their portfolio to 20 to 25 in the next three years. The focus will be on growth-stage business opportunities, with a full two-thirds going to European companies and the rest doled out to companies in other places around the globe.
“Oceans are the critical life-support system for life on earth,” says Chris Gorell Barnes, the Founding Partner of Ocean 14 Capital. “If we are to save the planet, there is clear evidence that if we don’t have a healthy & functioning ocean, we have zero chance. The ocean provides half the oxygen we breathe, absorbs half the carbon, feeds the world, and employs hundreds of millions of people. It will be game over for humanity if it’s not functioning.”
Ocean 14’s investments to date include a shrimp breeding technology specialist company called SyAqua and plastic management platform, AION.
The blue economic sector is expected to be worth $3 trillion by 2030.
Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar is so many things. He is an artist, a seer, a visionary, a disruptor, a father, a survivor. All of this is displayed on his canvases… the layers, the textures, the energy, the call for his audience to look within themselves and find a truer meaning to reality, to evolve.
For the month of September, Behnam-Bakhtiar’s exhibition ‘Journey Within’ will be on display at Sotheby’s new Monaco gallery. It is a unique exhibition for the multidisciplinary artist, who is very selective about the galleries he works with. But he says he has enjoyed working with Louise Grether, head of Sotheby’s Monaco office, and Mark Armstrong, senior director.
It is an exhibition with which the Franco-Iranian artist continues to question modern value systems and calls for introspection, for a more spiritual, human-centred approach to living.
The crisscross finish, and scraped and layered textures have become his signature style of painting. His creative process is impromptu, he tells me during a recent private showing; nothing is planned beforehand, and he mixes his paints on the canvas as he goes. It means that no single piece can ever be recreated; they are as unique as he is.
“My work really focuses on layering and delayering, and time plays a very important role,” he says. “The paints dry to a certain degree, and there is literally a little window when I can successfully scrape off the paint in a way in order to get the texture that you can see.”
Behnam-Bakhtiar compares the layering in his paintings to the layering in life, and he is passionate when he speaks about energy.
“Once you look within, once you start removing the unnecessary layers of your humanity, you get to a point where you really start feeling your source frequency; you understand the universal language, what is going on. Right now, we don’t see it with our physical eyes, but there is such an exchange of energy between all of us. We are made of energy at the end of the day, so if we can really understand how our humanities are made, we will be able to live a life that we are destined to.”
‘London’ by Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar, photo by Monaco Life
‘London’, for example, radiates a dark energy. Behnam-Bakhtiar admits it was a difficult moment in his life, and his painting of the London landscape reflects that. The others are vibrant and bold, mirroring the colours of the Mediterranean. These were painted at his studio in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat where he has lived with his wife and son for a number of years.
“When it comes to my abstract works, I want that they evoke an emotion that triggers something in your being, something that clicks in the psyche and makes you want to understand more,” he says. “As an artist, the biggest satisfaction I can have is that someone comes in front of my work, has a little click, and leaves with that click and then it alters their way of life. Everyone has a different experience when they come in front of the painting, and I’m always in the corner, watching how people react.”
It hasn’t always been about abstract art for Behnam-Bakhtiar. He started out doing portraiture and has worked with film, installations, and sculptures. “I flirt between abstraction and figuration”, reveals the artist. In 2018, he exhibited sculptures in Villa Santo Sospir before it was closed for renovation, the hallowed grounds of Jean Cocteau’s Cap Ferrat hideaway and the home that he “tattooed” with his unique frescoes in tempera. Along with the sculptures created in his signature scraped-paint style, Behnam-Bakhtiar also edited audio clips of himself talking with Cocteau about how humanity needs to be more connected to the universe.
‘Journey Within’ exhibition by Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar at Sotheby’s Monaco. Photo by Monaco Life
The beauty and light of the French Riviera has long been an attraction for artists, but Behnam-Bakhtiar doesn’t like to be compared to the greats. “All I can say is that I get it why they came here. It’s not a question of following in anybody’s footsteps, but this place truly has an impact. That’s the reason why I moved from London to Cap Ferrat, it’s the light.”
His inspiration, he reveals, comes from life experiences.
Born in Paris in 1984, Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar is a fourth generation artist and has been painting since the age of four. As a teenager and young adult, he lived in Tehran, Iran. Through his mother, he traces his decent from Iran’s ancient Bakhtiaru tribe. Through his father, he is a descendant of the Qajar monarch Ahmad Shah.
“Ours was a highly prominent family in Iran before the revolution. This current regime doesn’t like people like us because they are paranoid and they see us as a threat. So, I went through a lot of traumatic experiences in my life. Placed in those situations, it pushed me to really look within.”
He points to the largest painting in the room. It is titled ‘Twin Trees of Life’. “I paint trees in abstract form to remind people that no matter where you are, no matter what happens to you on any day, you always have the power to change your life, but you really need to want it, to visualise it. And at some point, you are able to open your third eye.”
Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar is clearly very spiritual, but he is also an industrialist. In June 2021, at the iconic Grand-Hotel du Cap-Ferrat, Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar, British digital artist Vector Meldrew, and British singer, composer and entrepreneur Tinie Tempah collaborated in what was the world’s first dedicated NFT residency to create a suite of NFT art works, curated by Kamiar Maleki.
The residency culminated in a unique, collaborative performance of live painting by Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar and a musical and spoken word performance by Tinie Tempah. “We wanted to merge the contemporary art world, music and digital,” The four NFTs, under the banner Present the Future, dropped on 21st July 2021 and were auctioned by Bonhams. They sold instantly.
“The NFT world is interesting because it does give power to the creatives,” says the artist. “I’m involved in the crypto world as well, so I know what’s going on, but as an artist I had an old school mentality, even though I’m from a younger generation. I will always stick to real, tangible works, but NFTs create opportunities for young creatives, and I respect that. They can get royalties; they have more power.”
Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar is known in the art world as a disruptor, a “rebel artist” as some international media have called him. And the 38-year-old says he no longer repels the label.
“I was at a panel discussion last summer and someone from the audience said Sassan is a rebel artist. And I thought, oh my God, you know what? I am a rebel artist, and I am a rebel in life.”
Journey Within is featuring at Sotheby’s Monaco Gallery until 26th September.
