Lionel Sabatté

Lionel Sabatté’s body of work possesses a strange beauty from which metamorphoses of matter are born. Sculptures, paintings, oxidations on metal plates, installations and drawings all bear witness to a highly original force that seems to cross the ages.

Guided by the energy inherent to all things, Lionel Sabatté has built his work on the use of salvaged materials that still bear the traces of lived experience within them. Like his taxidermist grandfather, he sculpts and models in order to provide things with a second life. Sometimes he shapes animal or anthropomorphic creatures (birds, bears and wolves, as well as unicorns), protagonists in a new mythology, sometimes he makes others appear using chemical oxidation processes, revealing the depth of time in terms of colour. Hence, between intuition and fabulation, his work examines our relationship with living things and the cycles of transformation.

The artist often prefers in situ creation, paying close attention to the dialogue with the space appropriated and the balance of proportions. The work he created for Chaumont-sur-Loire in 2023 is proof enough. Part of the landscape, Chemins croisés [Crossed Paths] acts as a passageway from one world to another, creating a porosity between reality and fiction. For the 2026 Art Season, the artist has returned with one of his most emblematic figures: an owl, especially designed for the Domain and installed beneath the Stables Canopy. Both animal presence and symbol of wisdom, the sculpture seems to rise out of the ground like an ancient being. Silent guardian, it has made its place in this crossing point, a protective apparition inviting the beholder to shift from the real to the imaginary.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES