From 19th April to 14th June, the Ceysson & Bénétière gallery will be presenting recent works by Lionel Sabatté at the Domaine de Panéry in the Gard region of France. Recently nominated for the Prix Marcel Duchamp 2025, the artist continues his research into minerals and animals by introducing pozzolan, a volcanic powder, which enters the composition of roman cement. The result is a series of poetic, sensitive, and disturbing works that contribute to a broader reflection on life. With this exhibition, Sabatté opens a new chapter in his work, rooted in the materiality of the world, confronting us with a new way of thinking about life and the inevitable passage of time.
Pozzolan, linked to the history of both humanity and the Earth, becomes for Sabatté a new field of experimentation. Continuing with his bestiary, the artist shapes creatures from the ashes, birds that, like the phoenix, are reborn. These sculptures embody the suspended moment when matter seems to repair itself, caught between destruction and reconstruction, a disturbing echo of living processes.
This group of sculptures is complemented by a series of oil paintings, also created using pozzolan, but this time mixed with fragments of silk fabric. Lionel Sabatté works on the floor. He pours different dilutions of liquid onto his canvas, letting appear organics forms, shifting forms that shape a universe where new creatures emerge. Through these gestures, he questions the relationship between chance and mastery, figuration and abstraction, birth and dissolution. Silk, linked to the metamorphosis of the butterfly, and pozzolan—a volcanic rock symbolizing destruction—weave to create a dialectic between the mineral and the organic, the ephemeral and the timeless, the birth and chaos.
