Jérôme Charbonnier is an artist who almost never paints. He picks, photographs, assembles. A dead leaf, a lily corolla, a butterfly wing: small organic elements he gathers, isolates on black background, and reassembles to give birth to figures nature herself never combined this way. In Bordeaux, we noticed him through exhibitions and gallery visits, and never really lost sight of him.
His style?
Charbonnier works by picking and assembly. He draws from a vast image territory, recovers fragments from different times, visual registers that would never have crossed elsewhere, and offers them a new common existence. The result isn't quite what you thought you recognized. Something else, built on the edge of several worlds, where automatic image reading gets short-circuited.
His favorite material: plants. Autumn leaves in russet tones, white flower petals, butterflies with nearly transparent wings: Charbonnier deploys a real visual alphabet from nature. A fox emerges from a leaf pile, a silhouette guessed between two corollas, a jaw drawn in a vein hollow. His bestiary is entirely built from organic fragments which, isolated on black background, take on almost surgical relief.
His approach is nothing illustrative. It questions a reflex: why do we recognize a face where there are only curves, an animal where there's only light and matter? Charbonnier plays with this mechanism to better destabilize it. What seemed a still life becomes a portrait. What resembled a portrait, seen closely, returns to a petal accumulation. The work morphs according to the distance you stand at.
What we love?
First striking thing: patience. Charbonnier doesn't sign a fast gesture, doesn't bet on immediate effect. Each composition requires collection time, sorting, trial before the figure emerges. A too dark leaf skews balance, a too open flower breaks reading. The approach is as much naturalist as draftsman, and this discipline finally produces rightness.
We also love his relationship to time. In a world saturated with fast images made to be consumed in a fraction of a second, Charbonnier's work forces slowing down. The gaze doesn't settle, it searches. You do a first round, think you understood, then come back to a piece you overflew and notice something you hadn't seen. In front of a Charbonnier, you don't consume an image, you decipher it.
Finally, this way of paying tribute to the plant world without forcing it. No heavy ecological discourse, no militant staging. Just a rare attention paid to what others crush or sweep. In a time dominated by digital and synthetic, recomposing the real from leaves picked off the ground is almost a silent resistance act.
Where to see him?
From 4 June to 12 July 2026, Jérôme Charbonnier exhibits at Galerie Magnetic, rue du Faubourg des Arts, for his personal exhibition "Contre-Formes". Opening Thursday 4 June, 7pm to 10pm, free entry. In our opinion, the best moment to discover his work live, at large scale, in conditions where it takes its full measure.
