La Belle Étoile * publishes two card games by Stéphane Coutelle.
Stéphane Coutelle is above all a portrait photographer, a bulimic of photoshoots that make him happy and balanced. In March 2020, confinement presented itself to him as an unprecedented ordeal: for the first time, no more models to photograph. His reduced horizon led him to take a more curious look at the objects that surrounded him: he launched himself into the series of Quarantine Subjects. 54 days and 54 photos later, on the eve of lifting of the lockdown, Barbara Moors, his accomplice and co-founder of their publishing house La Belle Étoile *, suggested to him the idea of making a card game: it will be the Containment Game.
At the start of 2021, they wanted to repeat the exercise, with a game entirely dedicated to cooking. They started work on L’Amuse Bouche *, which is being released this week. The 54 products which compose it, fruits, vegetables, spices, etc., were chosen with the most total subjectivity, according to the seasons and the returns of markets. The two authors’ bias is to privilege the truth of the products, their intrinsic beauty and the most straightforward path to the collective emotions they evoke. The handful of cutlery on the back of the cards illustrates this invitation to share. L’Amuse Bouche * is a game of delightful and generous simplicity.
The Containment Game and L’Amuse Bouche * are available on www.la-belle-etoile.art
