PSYCHODESSINS

In his series of exhibition centering around the impossible drawings in his book Psychodessins (Hat & Beard Press), Léon combines the long work of his inner travels with physical manifestations of the insights he discovered in the realm of the psyche. In an expansive suite of mixed media works on paper, Léon has been channeling the automatic drawing process popular among André Masson and other Paris Surrealists—itself an expression of the era’s fascination with the nascent field of psychoanalysis and self-realization offered by figures like Carl Jung and Otto Rank.

Building on the insights offered up by the psychodessins, Léon seeks to further discover facets of their meaning through other physical manifestations and mediums. A human figure, a theremin-enhanced automaton, invites viewers into a liminal space of strangeness and unself-conscious play. Paintings in the exhibition include a mesmerizing field of pattern, buzz, street lights, and invisible codes, across which our silhouetted traveler is seen to move; another is a palindromic portal, a literal door of perception per Huxley, which also continues the theme of rivers, crossings, and transformations. A site-specific mural weaves a vast tondo of Matisse-like dancer/divers, enacting interconnectedness in a zero-gravity space of art history, symbolism, and poetic narrative. Black like the traveling man, flickering like sinuous flames, the forms of these figures are further echoed in a flame of sandblasted black glass—an abstraction of the ego and a caution against allowing its weight to block magic’s delicate entry into the mind.

Psychodessins // Hat & Beard Press