Lionel Sabatté / Zoocénose

For his second solo exhibition at Galerie 8+4, Lionel Sabatté is unveiling a new body of work, the fruit of lengthy research, with a view to reinventing the image itself, through iconoclastic practices using multiple techniques to produce singular works, one copy at a time. While a series of works has led him to reinvent the notion of photography, prints and engraving, a new stage has led him to question the practice of weaving in order to reveal its full pictorial potential. All of this is placed under the sign of life, nature and the sea, or as he likes to say, "inventing a new zoocenosis". If, in scientific terms, zoocenosis refers to the ecological concept of a living, natural and interdependent animal community, this is indeed a work in which the creations, the result of varied cross-fertilisation, constitute the artist's unique biotope, from which his fantastic universe escapes... The exhibition will feature several works from the Poussièrographies series, as well as the new Pêches series, with a set of small dust engravings.

In all, some thirty new works on paper will be unveiled alongside the artist's first tapestry.

An ode to living things and the extraordinary heterogeneity of the forms they can embody, 'Zoocénose' is an adventure that brings together earth, humus, plants, the vastness of the ocean and the sad degradation of our environment. Lionel Sabatté counters this state of affairs with a form of onirism that took shape several years ago with his use of dust as the very material of art. But with 'Zoocénose', he pushes the logic even further, giving these productions a new aura. .