Home / Artists / Lionel Sabatté
Back

Lionel Sabatté

The sphere of the living and the transformations of matter due to the passage of time are at the heart of Lionel Sabatté's work. An all-round artist, practicing painting, drawing and sculpture at the same time, he makes all his works interact in a permanent interconnection. His research into the mineral and the animal gives rise to poetic, sensitive and disturbing works that contribute to a global reflection on our condition and the place we occupy in our environment.

Following an artistic approach based on experimentation, he works with sometimes trivial materials, collecting dust, ashes, coal, dead skin, tree stumps, oxidized iron and bronze... which he combines. The works thus created carry with them a delicacy, but also a "disquieting strangeness", giving life to a hybrid bestiary: horses, bees, birds, bears, wolves, owls, unicorns...

And so, between fiction and reality, a reversal takes place, questioning notions of beauty, ugliness, repulsion and attraction. Lionel Sabatté sets out to establish an archaeology of the present, detecting a disquieting beauty in the survival of matter. Nurtured by an imaginary world reminiscent of fables, the animal figure is omnipresent in Lionel Sabatté's work, and is no stranger to thinking about the species, its evolution and mutations. Through the animal, we are confronted with our own monstrosity.

For the 2023 edition, Lionel Sabatté is collaborating with Private Choice to co-produce a hybrid creation, somewhere between an art object and a piece of designer furniture. It's a sculptural bronze stool with a turtle-like appearance, whose long limbs make it a supernatural creature. This unique piece, named Tortubouret mischievously transgresses the limits of furniture, fantasizing an animal-shaped seat to which the metal alloy adds preciousness.

Web storeLionel Sabatté

Biography

Lionel Sabatté is a French artist born in 1975 and a graduate of ENSBAP (2003). He lives and works between Paris and Los Angeles.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS - SELECTION

  • 2023 / Pollens clandestins, Château de Chambord, Chambord, France - Commissariat / Curated by: Yannick Mercoyrol
  • 2023 / Chemins croisés, Domaine régional de Chaumont-sur-Loire, Chaumont-sur-Loire, France
  • 2022 / La Ruche, Fondation d'Entreprise Hermès in partnership with Vent des forêts, Saint-Louis-lès-Bitche, France
  • 2021 / "Possible remains of our future", Ceysson & Bénetière, New York, USA
  • 2021 / "Éclosions", MAMC Saint Etienne Métropole, Saint Etienne, France
  • 2020 / "Fragments mouvants", Bullukian Foundation, Lyon, France
  • 2020 / "Chimeras of rust and dust", La Maison des Arts, Bages, France
  • 2019 / IN SITU, Heritage and Contemporary Art 2019, Association Le Passe Muraille, curator : Pascale Pique, Grotte de Bédeillac, Ariège, France
  • 2019 / "Golden mist, ashes and dust", Musée du Gévaudan, Mende, France
  • 2019 / Lionel Sabatté : sculptures, Centre d'art nomade, Toulouse, France
  • 2019 / "Who knows how many flowers must have fallen", Nouvel Institut Franco-Chinois / Museum
  • 2019 / Gadagne / Bullukian Foundation, Lyon, France
  • 2018 / "Demeure", Patio de la Maison Rouge, Paris, France
  • 2018 / "La morsure de l'air", Ceysson & Bénétière, Paris, France
  • 2018 / Tanières, Atelier Estienne - center d'Art Contemporain, Pont-Scorff, France
  • 2017 / Luxembourg Art week, Ceysson & Bénétière, Paris, France
  • 2017 / Mirabilia, Joseph Denais Museum, Beaufort-en-Vallée, France
  • 2017 / "Chassé-croisé", Château de Champlitte, Haute-Saône, France
  • 2017 / "Zoocryptage", Crypte Sainte-Eugénie, Biarritz, France
  • 2017 / "La sélection de Parentèle", Musée de la Chasse, Paris, France
  • 2017 / "Catwalk, Please do not enter", Los Angeles, USA
  • 2016 / "Tectonic mutations", Beaux-arts, Grenoble, France
  • 2016 / "Charbons fertiles", MAC Artuem, Chateauneuf-le-Rouge, France
  • 2016 / "La désobéissance", curated by Magali Gentet, Le vParvis, Tarbes-Pyrénées, France
  • 2016 / "Échafaudages d'une éclosion", Chapelle des Calvairiennes, Mayenne, France
  • 2015 / "Scaffolding for a caress", Musée de Vernon, France
  • 2015 / "Échafaudages sur le ressac", Carré Amelot/ Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle, La Rochelle.
  • 2015 / "Échafaudage d'un printemps", Curated by Huang Du, Yishu 8, Beijing, China
  • 2015 / "Projet Phoenix rouge", Public commission from Unesco and the Mauritian State, Mauritius
  • 2014 / "La fabrique des profondeurs", Aquarium du Trocadéro, Paris, France
  • 2014 / "La constance des alizés", Institut français de Maurice, Mauritius
  • 2014 / "Lionel Sabatté : Un autre monde", curated by Philippe Piguet, Abbaye Saint-Jean d'Orbestier, France
  • 2012 / "Le crocodile en pièces", FIAC Hors les murs Jardin des Plantes, Paris, France
  • 2011 / "La meute", FIAC Hors les murs, Jardin des Plantes, Paris, France

PRICE

  • 2020 / Winner of the Luxembourg Art Prize
  • 2019 / Del Duca Foundation Painting Prize
  • 2018 / Prix des Amis de la Maison Rouge, Fondation Antoine de Galbert
  • 2017 / Drawing Now drawing prize, Paris
  • 2015 / Residence Tour Saint-Ange / Colette Tornier, Seyssins, France
  • 2014 / pARTage residency, French Institute of Mauritius, Mauritius
  • 2013 / Vent des Forêts, Meuse, France
  • 2011 / Winner of the Yishu 8 Prize, Beijing, China
Artists