ARTIST MUSICIAN VIDEOGRAPHER

Stephane Leonard´s work is highly influenced by his environment. He is a close observer and a detailed listener.
His main focus is the moment of progress or evolution, the inbetween state of an object, an idea, a thought or an emotion just before becoming defined. Sounds build up to a yet unfullfilled emotion, lines about to become a form carefully dapped onto a piece of paper lean forward into recognition only to become even more obscured. It´s a sensitively balanced act of an artist on a thin wire only minutes away from a thunderstorm.
Sound, drawings and video are equally important and can be rather site specific. Especially the installations feed themselves from the places and situations they are presented in. A lot of the audio source material are so called field recordings – documentations of places, a noise or single tones removed from their original context to be transcribed into a collage of sounds, a modern composition.
In that sense Leonard consciously uses narrative elements like harmonies, words or recognisable sound and video footage to specifically contemplate about the codes of communication, the misguidance of signs and symbols, the expectations of the audience, questioning a collective memory and predefined interpretations. Within the drawing of a word, a fictional graphic score or an almost object evolves not knowing where to go to yet. Lines become lines again, withdrawing from themselves from fixed categories, returning to a state of unsavety, unfinishedness and soon to become. A sound can only be referred to being a sound. Tones assembled in a composition can take the listener by the hand, leading them through an imaginary soundscape, a maze of twists and turns only to guide them back to the sound itself.
It is an embryonic state of artistic expression that Leonard places his work in. Almost a method that comes from his curiosity in life and art and an inability to stand still paired up with a fear of repetition.

Stephane Leonard has studied drawing under Professor Paco Knöller, a former student of the Joseph Beuys class. Beuys, Knöller, Twombly, Nauman, Cage… are only some of the theoretic and aesthetic influences that can be found in his work.

Leonard is a founding member of the naivsuper artist collective that publishes and promotes modern composers, adventurous music, art and books and the naivsuper film collective which makes films, music videos, documentaries and video installations.
He is also a member of various music ensembles like the Endliche Automaten (Laptop Orchester Berlin) who he performs with as well as contributes compositions to, JuliJuni an improvisor trio with Michael Rieken and Ansgar Wilken and Leo Mars, a folk duo with Marcel Türkowsky.
His also performs under under his name Stephane Leonard and St. Leon or Saint Leon and the Grey.

His work has been shown in exhibitions in Berlin, New York, Hamburg, Bremen, Groningen, Neubrandenburg, Oslo, Bergen, Vienna, Zürich, Massachusetts, Bangkok and the Kirgisien National Museum for Fine Arts.

“In between spheric and dreamlike soundscapes up to the harsh cut up music concrete, pieces of field recordings taken from all over the globe emerge.
Stephane Leonard´s music creates a unique atmosphere that immediantly draws the attention of the listener. Out of a self coded max-msp software, a microphone and a small selection of external sound sources small sensitive universes stream together. While listening they expand further into the realms of imagination and thus take precise looks at the nature of the world around us. With the perfectionists love to detail, Stephane’s compositions build bridges which hold for even the most lost of characters.”
(Lars Marstaller, 2007)

“I am an observer. I watch everything from the tiniest movements to volcanic ashes blown into the atmosphere and I listen. I listen to every tram passing by, to every bird in the trees, to the wind and the bees and the world changing right in front of me. In my work I put the things I see and hear into relation to each other. I create some sort of content with an open end. Small insights into a world I so desperately would like to be able to read and understand one day.”
(Stephane Leonard, 2010)