HdM GALLERY

Artist Focus | Lionel Sabatté | pt. 2

Q. What is the overarching theme in your creations?
A. My work revolves around the paradox of the living, that is to say a permanent balance/imbalance between what is destroyed and what is constructed. I seek that point of tension where both reach their maximum intensity, where the desire to build and the force of destruction become simultaneously paroxysmal. [...] It is less about representing than about bringing forms into being, at the threshold between appearance and disappearance. It also involves materials and processes that embody these tipping points, often marginal or rejected materials such as dust, dead skin, oxidation processes, pozzolana (volcanic dust), peripheral elements of bronze work.

Ultimately, it is an attempt to show what still holds when everything seems to have disappeared.

Q. How would you like your work to be remembered in the future?
A. I would like my work to be perceived as a signal, or rather as a form of greeting addressed to those who will come after. I often think of the emotion one can feel in front of a negative hand in a cave, something very simple, but which crosses time and reaches us directly. A sign from the past that continues to act in the present. I would like my work to produce that kind of emotion, to be perceived as a trace, a survival, something that persists and is transmitted.

Discover the work of Lionel Sabatté at HdM Gallery - visit our website to find out more.

Artist Focus | Lionel Sabatté | pt. 1

Q. Where are you from, and how has your living environment shaped you?
A. I was born in the southwest of France, where I spent my childhood until the age of ten. I retain strong memories of nature, particularly in the Pyrenees and in the Landes forest. One of my grandfathers was a taxidermist and a hunter, and this proximity to animals deeply marked my imagination. Early on, I became passionate about prehistoric cave art. I then lived on Réunion Island until I was twenty. This territory strongly influenced me, both through its cultural diversity and the intensity of its nature and geology. These elements continue to inform my work today.

Q. What motivated you to pursue art professionally?
A. When I arrived in Paris, around the age of 21, I was studying to become a physical education teacher. It was then I discovered art schools as well as the contemporary art scene. I already had a personal practice, still disconnected from the art world, which in reality constituted the foundation of what I still do today. I understood that it was a vocation. I left my initial path to take the entrance exam for the Beaux-Arts, which I passed. That is how everything began.

Q. Which artists or movements have deeply inspired you?
A. Certain influences were decisive, particularly artists who question time and memory, such as Christian Boltanski and Roman Opalka with their conceptual approach. An exhibition by Bruce Nauman, seen at Beaubourg in the early 1990s, was also an important moment, particularly in its relationship to time and perception. The Nouveaux Réalistes played a key role, opening the possibility of using elements of reality as they are, through simple gestures such as accumulation or transformation. I also developed through contact with major sculptors such as Rodin, Giacometti, and Ousmane Sow, as well as major figures like Picasso.

Discover the work of Lionel Sabatté at HdM Gallery - visit our website to find out more.

HdM Gallery is pleased to present ‘Negative’, a solo exhibition of Song Ling. The exhibition will feature more than forty new works from several recent series, alongside the artist’s seminal early-1990s work “Meaningless Choice? No. 59”.

Song Ling | Negative
22 May - 4 July 2026
HdM Gallery, Beijing