Sébastien Lépine

Sébastien Lépine is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and works in Montreal. For the past ten years, he has been creating silkscreen posters for artists from the local music scene (Dumas, Zen Bambou, Bernhari, Groovy Aardvark, Tire le coyote, SUUNS) and for internationally renowned musicians (The National, Nils Frahm, Sigur Ros, Cigarettes after Sex). His graphic compositions have also been used for productions of the Opéra de Montréal and Quebec films (Le bruit des arbres, Le météore, Manoir, Les petites vagues). His images are constructed like puzzles, with layers of colors that are superimposed and interlocked.

From posters to silk-screening, Sébastien is not the type to wait for orders. The musical projects that make their way from his ear to paper benefit from his talent and receive his work as an offering. A dialogue is established between the musicians and the artist. It is this provoked meeting between two practices that motivates the artist, whose works without any contractual link emanate from a taste for music and large format serigraphy. An artistic practice.

His more recent work of collage and painting is juxtaposed with his poster work and confirms the artist’s interest in intuition, abandonment, chance and surprises. Again, transparency and superimposition feed his pictorial practice, approached in the same spirit of composition of the image by fragments. The themes are presented with a depth that does not seek to explain itself: a destroyed world where beauty remains. The ghostly presence of the silk-screen motif transforms the canvas into a battleground between the free exploration of the gesture by the paint and the mechanical repetition which, if it resurfaces, is always conquered by a raw plasticity. The work of large format imposes itself to allow to plunge into it and for the assumed gesture, for the physical action that it requires and the print that it leaves. The work thus aspires to leave a trace in the measure of the world that surrounds it.

His work has been exhibited in Montreal, at the Centre de design de l’UQÀM and at the Musée des beaux-arts de Sherbrooke. SLEP travels the world with his posters. Fairs in Hamburg, Chicago, Austin, Barcelona and New York have helped to make his work known. Most recently his work was featured in the book; Masters of Serigraphy Posters, by Professor Emeritus at the School of Design at the University of Quebec at Montreal Marc K. Choko, a publication dedicated to the recognition of the great artists and printers who have dedicated their talent to screen printing posters.