SpringBenoît Fournier (b. 1981, Carpentras, France) is a French artist living and working between France and Brazil. His paintings, sculptures, installations and ceramics activate biological processes through soil, clay and organic matter collected in the environments he inhabits, extending the dynamics of landscape into material: decomposition, circulation, regeneration.

I work from the soil, from what lies beneath our feet. I walk, collect and engage physically with the environments I live in, particularly agroforestry in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. Displacement is the first gesture. The materials I use, earth, clay, stoneware, compost and organic matter, come directly from these contexts, and each work carries the trace of a territory.

Soil is not a setting. It is a metabolic organism on which the continuity of life depends. On canvas, earthworms take part in the making, their traces inscribing themselves in the material as a writing of the living. In wood-fired stoneware, the same process continues, shrinkage and flame completing the form.

I do not represent landscape, I extend its dynamics. Forms emerge from digestion, decomposition and circulation, where fertility and destruction, growth and erosion are held in tension. Faced with these pieces, the viewer is not standing before an image, but before transformations underway.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS (selection)
2027 — Espace Larith, Paysages métaboliques, Chambéry, France (upcoming, Spring 2027)
2024 — Espace Frans Krajcberg – Centre d’art contemporain Art et Nature, Regarder l’invisible, duo show, Paris, France
2023 — Art Now Projects, Osmose, Geneva, Switzerland
2021 — Centro Cultural Z42, Tudo no mundo é gente, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
2019 — Espace L, Nipêi Yuxiî, Geneva, Switzerland
2017 — Blue Sky Gallery, Babylon, Portland, USA

GROUP EXHIBITIONS (selection)
2026 — Blue Sky Gallery, Portland, USA
2025 — Art Now Projects, Osmose, Geneva, Switzerland
2024 — Instituto Inclusartiz, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
2023 — Galeria Matias Brotas, Vitória, Brazil
2022 — Hélio Oiticica Municipal Art Center, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
2022 — Photo Basel, with Galerie L’Antichambre, Basel, Switzerland
2021–2024 — Este Arte, Reginart Collection, Punta del Este, Uruguay
2020 — Art Genève, with Simon Studer Art and Rosa Turetsky Gallery, Geneva, Switzerland
2019 — Biennale d’Issy, Paris, France
2017 — A Gentil Carioca, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
2017 — Museu Histórico Nacional (MHN), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
2016 — Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

RESIDENCIES
2024 — Instituto Inclusartiz, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
2022 — Kaaysá – Art & Nature, São Paulo, Brazil
2021 — Centro Cultural Z42, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

COLLECTION (selection)
Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (MAM-RJ), Joaquim Paiva Collection, Brazil
Museu Histórico Nacional (MHN), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Musée Alimentarium, Vevey, Switzerland
Mangroves Arts Foundation, Barcelona, Spain
Simon Studer Art Collection, Geneva, Switzerland
Reginart Collection, Geneva, Switzerland
Zarabatana Collection, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Geoffrey C. Koslov, private collection, Houston, USA

BOOKS
2015 | Water memories, published by Andrea Jakobsson, Brazil
2014 | The city by Bandeira, published by Batel

EDUCATION
Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage (EAV), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil