Stéphane Halleux creates sculptures of characters and objects that have a feeling of Tim Burton meets Rube Goldberg by way of 1930’s animated cartoons.
His tiny-wheeled cars, junk-dealer robots, Charles Adamsish characters, mechanized chairs and enigmatic “engines” are wonderful visual fun. Their textured and weathered surfaces, strange shapes, and arrangements of odd parts are imaginative and entertaining.
Halleux’s objects are appealing in a way that makes you want to pick them up, or at least be able to view them from a wide variety of angles. Though he often provides images from more than one angle, it’s unfortunate that Quicktime VR isn’t as easy as standard digital photography, it would be great to be able to rotate these images.
Halleux’s web site is apparently new, as the biography section is still “coming soon”, and some other sections are also incomplete. Though there is a section of preliminary design sketches (”croquis”) for some of his pieces, there is no information on his creations in terms of materials, technique, intention or size. Hopefully, that will be added in the near future. In the mean time, we’ll have to settle for looking through his galleries of wonderfully eccentric objects.
Great use of shapes and textures. Love the whimsical nature of the character designs.
Wonderful imagination!
I believe the style is called steam-punk or something very close to it (possibly a more miniature level of it). I always found metal craft inspiring on many levels. Thank you for this link.