Refusing to confine himself to a single aesthetic language, Nathan Harbonn approaches each image as an open form. Like a writer adapting their style to the story they wish to tell, Harbonn continually reinvents his visual vocabulary in search of a spontaneous and free pictorial language. His visual universe draws from myths, dreams, childhood, and religious iconography, while also bearing the imprint of a generation shaped by the internet and advertising.

In his most recent body of work, Harbonn has turned to landscape painting, born from the need to paint while shifting away from the human form and the urban city. While landscapes have always served as his main inspiration for his painting, Harbonn felt the desire to reconnect with a place that was a root of his personal history: his grandmother’s garden. He first began painting this garden last year, starting from the idea that the light of this special place shines more brightly for him than for anyone else, because it holds his roots and his memories.

It has now been a year since Harbonn first began painting this garden, and the place has transcended from being a physical natural space to a mystical place that only exists within the artist’s mind. Nature no longer appears as a mere backdrop, but as a benevolent and silent crowd, more a character than a spectator, a witness to a transitioning world where light prevails. Harbonn states, “For although it is trees and flowers that we see, it is above all my own reality that I have painted, my thoughts and memories held still before nature.”

Nathan Harbonn (b. 1996) currently lives and works in Paris, France. He graduated in 2019 from Gobelins, l’École de l’Image, Paris, and began his career in animation, receiving several awards for short films before fully dedicating himself to painting in 2022.

This trajectory deeply informed Harbonn’s practice – his experience as a director and animator brings a strong narrative perspective, along with a particular sensitivity to movement, and a fascination with transformation. Harbonn still remains connected to the world of animation, and in 2023, he became a professor of storytelling and 2D animation at Gobelins.

Harbonn has exhibited with Mmatters Gallery, Paris; Sol Mondo; Galerie Sébastien Lepeuve, Paris; Galerie LJ, Paris; Diametre 15, Montreuil, among others. This is the artist’s first exhibition in the United States.