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Sebastien Léon is a French artist and designer better known for his sound sculptures that have been shown around the world in amazing places such as the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Park Avenue Armory and the New Museum in New York, the Palazzo della Triennale in Milan, UCCA in Beijing, among many more.

Léon recently debuted Hydrochrom, available at Twentieth Exhibitions, a collection of bubble-like glass sculptures inspired by the ocean. Stemming from Ancient Greek, Hydrochrom translates into “the color of water”, which is what Leon aims to find in this new collection of tabletop, lighting, and sound sculptures.

Moreover, Léon is taking part in Domicile (n.)’s group exhibition All Tomorrow’s Parties, curated by Michael Slenske, presenting a sound sculpture that plays the sounds of the streets of New York. He also created an installation for the opening of Great Jones Distillery, the first whiskey distillery in Manhattan since the prohibition. And if that wasn’t enough, his band, Reallite, is soon releasing its first single “The 3 Degree Club.”

Flaunt talked to the artist about his story, his art, and, of course, the color of water.

You recently debuted your latest works, Hydrochrom, in Los Angeles, what can you tell us about the collection?

It’s a collection of blown glass pieces that are inspired by the ocean in general. By the texture of the waves when they crash. You have a lot of bubbles, sort of different colors of blows, reflections of the sky... And so these sculptures are table top sculptures or they are lighting or sound sculptures. 

I do a lot of sound sculptures. I used to do large sound sculptures and large installations, but this time, this summer, in particular, I started to do table top sculptures, so the ones I’ve done for the show are all around 16 inches by 16 inches, and they play the ocean. The soundtrack is inspired by the ocean, so I record different sounds of the water - flowing water or the sound of sea mammals, all sorts of stuff you may find in the ocean, and I tweak all the sounds and make them into the sound sculptures. 

Every piece is named after a sea, where did this idea come about?

I started doing his project in December 2019. I was invited by a company called Gemfields. They are the biggest gemstone mining company in the world. They mine emeralds and rubies. They asked me to do sculptures based on rubies and emeralds for Art Basel Design in Miami. So I did two first sculptures in glass that I showed at the fair. We had a booth. And one was green, one was blue, so one inspired by ruby, one by emerald. So that was the exploration of working with glass. And I loved working with glass. 

I do furniture, and I paint, and glass is an in between, because it can’t really control the color, we blow it more then it forms more, but you can’t alter the pieces once they’ve found a mold, you can’t re-control what they are going to be. So it’s kind of what you would find in painting when you are always fighting with the painting to make it arrive at the final stage, but it also is for the home. It’s in between furniture and painting, that’s why I like it. 

That’s when you started working with glass? In 2019? 

Yes. And then during the pandemic, I couldn’t do a lot of different projects because a lot of them were in Europe and shipping was difficult and some of the fabricators got sick or closed shop, etc. So that’s when I had time to explore glass blowing. So we blow it in Los Angeles, I work with different blowers in Venice Beach. So not Venice, but Venice Beach, which I find funny. And then I wanted to do something new, so we tried different colors, and the blue was so interesting, because the texture of a glass is very different from traditional glass. In traditional glass you don’t want any bubbles, you want the color to be homogeneous or throughout, but we are looking for the opposite. We are looking for a lot of bubbles, a lot of anomalies, a lot of color differences. That’s why it works very well on the blue color, because it really looks like water. So that’s what I’ve done with this project. 

Do you have a personal connection to the ocean?

Well being in Los Angeles, you know, it’s right there. And it’s so beautiful. The whole environment is so fucked right now too that it’s good to come back to very basic things, now that even the world has lost its balance. I also do a lot of elemental pieces, so I work with basic geometry, I work with trying to reproduce what’s in nature in my language, and water is very basic. 

Some of your works become light fixtures, and others sound sculptures, how do you know what is going to be what? Do you decide what it will be before making it or you create the glass and then decide? What is the process of creating a piece?

That is a good question, because most people would first think of a light fixture and then make it. I do the opposite. I come up with the sculpture and then I am like ‘oh this could be a great light fixture or this one could be a great sound sculpture.’ I am always most excited about sound sculptures because I am a musician too, so I love making them. It’s, first of all, a way to bring music to home, it’s kind of like a zen soundtrack, and the channels never repeat. It’s like an ambiance sculpture. But the light sculptures are also beautiful because the light is very soft, and because the glass is irregular the reflections of the light through the glass show a sort of landscape. It refracts very beautifully. 

How did you start making art? Was it always a passion? 

I come from France, and I moved to New York when I was 26, and New York is so full of art, everywhere, and New York is a city that gives you a lot of opportunities to learn and do new things. Just because you haven’t studied design doesn’t mean you can’t be a designer, kind of thing. So I had a corporate job. I was a marketing executive at a company, but I didn’t really like it, and I thought that companies needed to communicate through art, so I started to propose different art platforms for companies, for brands. So I became a curator for brands, but that was a long time ago, cause I'm old. That was in 2003. So I was one of the first curators for brands. I was a curator for Diesel, when it was a different brand back then, and also Coca-Cola, Starbucks, Toyota, Audi, so many. And I worked with artists, and we would work together in installations, we would come up with all sorts of platforms, and that’s how I learned to do art. Cause I was always very hands on.  And over the years, I started making a lot of sound sculptures, and would assign a song to the installations myself, or brands would ask me to do them, and that's how I became an artist. 

Obviously the ocean is a big influence on this collection, but what are other things or people that  have influenced your art?

As far as designers, I really like Vincenzo De Cotiis, he’s a fantastic furniture designer, and I’ve had the chance to do a sound installation with dance performance in one of his buildings, so that’s how I discovered his work. And I listen to a lot of music. Music is also a big influence on the work. And then I watch and read science fiction. There is a writer called J. G. Ballard, he is a science fiction writer from the 60s and 70s. His books are incredible. He speaks a lot about imagining the future, and in a lot of his books there are sound sculptures, or what he calls sonic statues. And it’s really interesting to read the dystopias of the future that these people imagined, that are starting to become real. Honestly. 

Do you have anything else on the works? 

Recently, actually yesterday, I just opened a show in New York that includes some of these pieces. It’s the first distillery of whiskey in New York since the prohibition. It’s called Great Jones. And they had their opening last night. It’s the whole building, a 4 story building, and they distill whiskey there. And they gave me a whole floor, so I did an installation. It’s New York whiskey, so I did an installation about how the Ice Age influenced the land of New York State, and how that land gives the specificities of that whiskey. I did that installation using the same sculptures, because they look like water, but there’s also lots of other things in that installation. So I am taking the concept of Hydrochrom to other shows as well. 

I am also releasing new furniture that’s inspired by insects. And I am working on music. On a record. And it’s a record once again about science fiction, dystopia, and the sea, and the villains, and big data about rising oceans. And it’s in the sound of 80s pop music. So Bowey in his commercial period. It’s a very naive style, very pop 80s, when nobody cared about anything. But we are releasing it today, when we still don’t really care. I mean we care but not enough to change our lifestyles. 

Do you play in a band?

I do this project under the name Reallite. It’s a reference to almost a different kind of reality. And it’s a band, but the musicians are all in different locations. We made the music before the pandemic, but we filmed the music videos during the pandemic, and now we are going to release that. But yeah, the first song we are going to release it’s called ‘The 3 Degree Club’ and it’s about which cities are going to be flooded when the temperatures rise. 

One of them is New York?

Miami for sure. And New Orleans. But yeah, all sorts of different things. I also am showing right now, another sculpture in New York, as part of Domicile’s exhibit All Tomorrow’s Parties, and that’s another sound sculpture but it looks like a french horn, a brass instrument, and that one plays bits of New York. Multichannel once again. It never repeats. And it’s the streets of New York, in case you miss the city.