Gabriel Leger FR, b. 1978

Gabriel Leger (1978) lives and works between Paris and Athens. Nourished by historical and literary references, his work revolves around the question of time. He is particularly interested in the idea of survival and in the fragments that the more or less distant past has bequeathed to us. Through incursions into the realm of archaeology, he seeks to bring back into the field of art a dialogue between past and present, ultimately blurring the distance that separates them.

A graduate of the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs (ENSAD-Paris, 2005) after training in khâgne-history, he was selected for the 52nd Salon de Montrouge and the 63rd Jeune Création festival, then awarded artistic residency grants in France (Camargo Foundation, 2009) and in Brazil (FAAP–Fundação A.A. Penteado, 2011).

His work has been presented in several solo exhibitions in Paris (Galerie Sator since 2012, Musée des Arts & Métiers, 2015) and Berlin (Galerie Michael Schultz, 2017). He has also taken part in numerous group exhibitions: FHEL—Fondation Leclerc (Cabinets de curiosité, curators Laurent Lebon & Patrick Mauriès, 2019), Fondation Lambert (De leur temps, cur. Stéphane Ibars, 2019), Fondation Fiminco (Point triple de la matière, cur. Mathieu Lelièvre, 2017), Musée du Louvre (Voyages/Philippe Djian, cur. Pascal Torres, 2015), IAC–Institut d’Art Contemporain de Villeurbanne (Pierres de visions, cur. Pascal Pique, 2015).

His works are part of the public collections of the Cnap, the Bibliothèque d’art et d’archéologie de Genève, and the private collections of Pierre-Alexis Dumas and the Fondation Francès.

A monograph of his work was published in 2017 with the support grant for publication from the Cnap (“Solve+Coagula”, ed. Sator), finalist for the FILAF prize “Best Art Book Published by a Gallery” (2017) and nominated for the ADAGP prize “Artist’s Book Revelation” (2018).

Gabriel Leger uses highly connoted natural materials such as bitumen, honey, wax, and lead, as well as ancient artifacts. The presentation of his works, whose formats range from simple objects to larger assemblages, often refers to museum display systems, either to align with them or to distance itself from them, depending on the degree of proximity sought.

Representative of his current work are Deep Time (2020), a contemporary production of 7,000 amulets from two ancient Egyptian molds; Le Un est le Tout (Ἓν τὸ πᾶν, 2020), a re-creation of Greco-Egyptian beer using authentic 3rd-century wheat; and Le miroir d’un moment (2016–20), a series of ancient mirrors whose oxidation prevented reflection and which he has partially repolished.