Each creation calls for the next
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Each creation calls for the next • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
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In an ongoing exploration rooted in the “impossible drawings” of his book Psychodessins (Hat & Beard Press), Léon unites the long arc of his inner travels with physical manifestations of the insights he has uncovered—and continues to uncover—within the realm of the psyche. In an expansive suite of mixed-media works on paper, he channels the automatic drawing process practiced by André Masson and the Paris Surrealists—an approach born from the era’s fascination with psychoanalysis and the paths to self-realization proposed by thinkers like Carl Jung and Otto Rank.
The drawings then evolve into animations, projections, and musical performances enacted by Léon on his bespoke electromagnetic sculpture “Franz Anton,” named in homage to Franz Anton Mesmer, pioneer of modern hypnosis.
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Sébastien Léon’s abstract paintings extend his practice as a sculptor and sound artist. Each work begins with a three-dimensional digital sculpture projected onto a wood panel. The architectural lines of the model form a geometric framework, guiding Léon as he applies strips of tape to define negative space before painting begins.
From this structure, he transforms abstract terrains into three-dimensional interstellar explorations by assigning an “altitude” to every color temperature in the composition. These resulting landscapes—part topography, part cosmos—form the visual core of Léon’s multimedia environments, where painting, video, and music converge into hypnotic, immersive worlds.
Several of these paintings and their corresponding video animations were later licensed by Samsung worldwide for use on their consumer screens.
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The Ties That Bind My Endless Skies consists of repeated drawings of geometric forms, conceived as loose studies for sculptures, furniture, or installations. Repeated in a hypnotic rhythm, each iteration unfolds as a slight temporal shift, as if the form itself were evolving through time.
This evolving body of work drew the attention of Champagne Krug, leading to a series of commissions through which the work expanded beyond drawing, unfolded across packaging, furniture, video animations, music, and a sound sculpture.
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To inaugurate the new Great Jones Distilling Co., Sébastien Léon was commissioned to create a permanent experiential installation celebrating the distillery’s mastery. Léon titled the project “Alchemy,” a nod to keme -the Ancient Egyptian word for Black Dirt-and the transformative art of turning base matter into gold. The geological richness of Upstate’s dark soil becomes a series of sedimentary murals, punctuated by mirror prisms that infinitely reflect ice-like blown-glass forms.
Léon further reimagines corn distillation as a field of organ-like copper pipes diffusing an abstracted Earth soundscape - from the Big Bang to today - created in collaboration with sound designer Stephen Dewey.
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For the Automotive Innovation Exhibition in Guangzhou (China), Sébastien Léon created a multimedia installation to represent Audi’s innovations in automotive sustainability.
Responding to advances in ultra–lightweight technology, Léon conceived a 15-meter geodesic dome filled with more than a thousand silver-foil balloons that reflected a hypnotic image of a car skeleton, the space, and its visitors. Suspended above, sixteen wireless speakers played an electronic symphony blending filtered industrial sounds with recordings of thirty birds.
Titled after Farid ud-Din Attar’s Sufi poem “The Conference of the Birds,” the installation suggested that humanity must continually seek balance between industrial progress and ecological responsibility—an idea particularly resonant with the audience of Guangzhou, one of the world’s major manufacturing hubs.
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Invited by Audemars Piguet to curate and design the 40-year anniversary exhibition of the Royal Oak, Sébastien Léon conceived a traveling installation blending design, photography, music, and video to showcase one hundred exceptional timepieces and highlight the Manufacture’s heritage. The exhibition revolved around five modular display units—“fragments”—each a self-contained station exploring a different facet of the Royal Oak story and easily shipped and assembled worldwide. Léon also created a monumental, organ-like sound sculpture featuring electronic music derived from the Royal Oak’s mechanical movements.
Léon invited video artist Davide Quayola and photographer Dan Holdsworth to produce original works exploring the origins of Audemars Piguet through their respective mediums. Following the project, both artists received significant new commissions: Quayola for a watch design, and Holdsworth for a signature photographic campaign that helped shape the brand’s visual identity.
