Mathieu Bonardet

Mathieu Bonardet is a French-Belgian artist born in 1989. A graduate of the Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2013, where he studied in Djamel Tatah’s studio, he quickly turned toward drawing, drawn by the immediacy of the trace and the temporal dimension of the medium. Under the guidance of Bernard Moninot and Valérie Sonnier, he developed this practice further and was awarded the Contemporary Drawing Prize.

The relationships between two elements—attraction, rejection, rupture, distance, imbalance—structure his entire body of work and often give rise to duos or diptychs. His interest in contemporary dance has led him to question the limits of gesture and to move drawing beyond the sheet of paper. As early as 2011, he began producing filmed and photographed actions, notably the series Ligne(s), featured on the cover of Roven in 2014, exhibited at König Galerie (Berlin, 2017), and currently presented in the exhibition Eyes & Ears: a constant negotiation at 20/21 Espacio de Arte, on the island of La Palma (until July 2026).

For several years, his work has oscillated between drawing and sculpture, with graphite and metal responding to one another. Winner of the agnès b. Prize (2011) and the Talents Contemporains Prize (6th edition)—after which the François Schneider Foundation acquired a group of sixteen drawings along with his first metal sculpture—he received the Matsutani Prize in 2024.

After collaborating with the Parisian galleries Jean Brolly and ETC. (specialized in minimal art), he joined the Brussels-based gallery Michèle Schoonjans, which dedicated his first solo show in Belgium (Chaosmos, 2025). He will soon present his work at Drawing Now with Galerie Dilecta, alongside Claire Vaudey.

Photography : © Samuel Chasseur