Lionel Sabatté was born in 1975 in Toulouse, France, and lives and works in Paris. A graduate of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris (2003), he has established himself as a singular voice in contemporary art through a practice that traverses sculpture, painting, and drawing.
Sabatté’s work is rooted in the material traces of time and the transforming effects of natural processes. He collects and reanimates residual materials — dust, ash, coal, fragments of dead skin, tree stumps, and similar organic or mineral elements — to give form to an evocative and often hybrid bestiary. From packs of wolves in dust to creatures born of rusted metal and found matter, his work blurs the boundary between the living and the inert.
Across media, Sabatté’s practice unfolds as a contemplation of transience, fragility, and the enigmatic presence of life in its many states. His surfaces, textures, and sculptural forms gesture toward forces that shape our environment and our perception of the world.
Lionel Sabatté’s work has been presented in major institutional contexts in France and internationally. He was notably invited for a Carte blanche at the Louvre Museum, where his sculptures were shown in dialogue with the museum’s collections. His work has also been exhibited at institutions such as the Centre Pompidou and the Palais de Tokyo, and is held in several public and private collections. Through these exhibitions, Sabatté has established a distinctive position within contemporary art, marked by a poetic and material exploration of life, entropy, and transformation.