Sébastien Labrunie, visual artist from France. Photo © Courtesy of the artist
Tell us what you do and your beginnings
I’m a visual artist, I mostly work on immersive canvases like full-dome or large-scale video installations. I still do traditional video work and illustration from time to time.
I started as a graphic designer many years ago and slowly moved towards real-time generative visuals, VR creations, and narrative immersive art.
What does your work aim to say?
I like to explore the narrative behind organic textures and always welcome visual accidents as a door to a deeper perception of our surroundings and our nature.
I’m not really pushing to say something specific in my works, I usually work instinctively trying to put into relief the connections between light, shadows, textures, and empty spaces, even if I choose a focus sometimes, a theme as an angle of approach.
I also keep an abstract narrative approach in my video works, sculpting with the matter, and sculpting with time.
Where do you find inspiration for your art?
In nature mostly, from micro worlds to macro ones, light, flora, and fauna. I also love to explore all sorts of distortions, analog or digital. I’m a big fan of glitch art. I also tend to gather ancient symbolism graphic content for inspiration, like alchemy drawings or ancient civilization cosmogony paintings.
Could you give us some insight into your creative process?
I often start my work doing kitbashing, 2D or 3D. Like a collage building up. Putting together 3D scans, creating an organic sculpture instinctively. Then I try to add motion, bringing life to still matter.
Once I have my base I usually add many many layers of post-processing to sculpt light, distort colors, digging deeper into the material to bring up another layer of perception to the subject, creating landscapes or just an unexpected point of view.
I found this disconnection from the original subject quite poetic, often refreshing, and a way to explore the universal connection between things.
What are your future projects?
More immersive pieces! But I would love to work on interactive sculptures using wood and stone, where the technology is invisible to the audience. Maybe in natural setups too. I really want to create magical tangible artifacts people can connect with.
Interview by Fabio Pariante, journalist / Twitter – Instagram
