Benoît Mazzer: Épouser la matière: Geneva
Future exhibition
Overview
Benoit Mazzer, LE GARDIEN, 2022
Olivier Varenne is pleased to present the first solo exhibition of French artist Benoît Mazzer (b.1982).
Looking at a painting by Benoît Mazzer is like walking along a mountain ridge, balancing on the edge between wonder and unease, where colour, form, and figuration open onto vast inner landscapes.
Born in Nice and trained at the Sorbonne and Villa Arson, Mazzer has forged a singular practice that blurs the lines between abstraction and figuration. His canvases vibrate with energy—sometimes serene, sometimes threatening—as if glimpses of other worlds were emerging through layers of paint.
Nature, memory, and the unconscious are at the core of his work.
Drawing from Romanticism, German Neo-Expressionism, and Vedantic philosophy, Mazzer composes paintings that are at once cosmic and intimate. Creatures, rock formations, and shifting atmospheres appear and dissolve, mirroring both his personal history of displacement and his meditative search for transcendence.
For this exhibition, Varenne presents a powerful selection of recent works: from monumental landscapes poised between abstraction and figuration, to paintings in which black wax and poured white paint form half-erased, dreamlike cartographies; and to composite portraits woven from religious iconography, masks, and ancient archetypes. What unites them is a sense of urgency and depth: painting as both survival and revelation.
We invite you to discover Benoît Mazzer’s world—where beauty collides with chaos, and each canvas opens a passage into the unknown.
Looking at a painting by Benoît Mazzer is like walking along a mountain ridge, balancing on the edge between wonder and unease, where colour, form, and figuration open onto vast inner landscapes.
Born in Nice and trained at the Sorbonne and Villa Arson, Mazzer has forged a singular practice that blurs the lines between abstraction and figuration. His canvases vibrate with energy—sometimes serene, sometimes threatening—as if glimpses of other worlds were emerging through layers of paint.
Nature, memory, and the unconscious are at the core of his work.
Drawing from Romanticism, German Neo-Expressionism, and Vedantic philosophy, Mazzer composes paintings that are at once cosmic and intimate. Creatures, rock formations, and shifting atmospheres appear and dissolve, mirroring both his personal history of displacement and his meditative search for transcendence.
For this exhibition, Varenne presents a powerful selection of recent works: from monumental landscapes poised between abstraction and figuration, to paintings in which black wax and poured white paint form half-erased, dreamlike cartographies; and to composite portraits woven from religious iconography, masks, and ancient archetypes. What unites them is a sense of urgency and depth: painting as both survival and revelation.
We invite you to discover Benoît Mazzer’s world—where beauty collides with chaos, and each canvas opens a passage into the unknown.
Works
