Flora Incognita: The Astrobotanical Herbarium
Spazio Nobile presents Flora Incognita: Herbarium of Potential Astrobotany, an otherworldly exhibition of photographs by Vincent Fournier. The exhibition opened on January 25th and will be on view through March 2, 2025.
From plants to animals, from the transformation of species that fascinates him, a globetrotter at heart and a discoverer of new territories connected to man and nature, French artist Vincent Fournier never ceases to amaze us. His boundless curiosity and imagination guide him in his photographic creations, which he nourishes with his enlightened thinking as a 21st-century explorer. The red thread that he has built around the imaginary future serves him like Theseus as Ariadne’s thread linking his journeys and epics worthy of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Vincent Fournier is a pioneer in his interpretation of life on earth and in space, which he extrapolates on the basis of advances in science and technology. From ‘Space Project’, which keeps track of ‘cosmodromes’ and aerospace bases, to the bestiary and cabinet of curiosities ‘Post Natural History’, which was our inaugural exhibition when the Spazio Nobile gallery was created in 2016. He has continued the adventure with ‘Auctus Animalis’ and, more recently, ‘Flora Incognita’, which feed his quest to bring nature to life and rebirth through reinvented flora and fauna. His constructed, dreamlike images document our arborescence, the architecture of living things in relation to man, space and time. Vincent Fournier asks: are we, as living beings, like trees, plants or flowers, fragile and sensitive materials? If we are to believe the visionary words of the great universal poet, essayist and artist Etel Adnan in her short text ‘Dans la forêt’ (‘In the Forest’) published by the bookseller Yvon Lambert in 2014: “These trees have grown under the influence of the moon… Poetry has an attraction for the things of the earth. It hides inside tree roots to speak to us in a different way.”
It is this poetry of the living and this same relationship with nature that Vincent Fournier describes with subtlety and a keen sense of beauty and mystery in the course of his photographic creations. His vision is shaped not only by the history of science but also by the history of art. When asked about the writings and images that have opened the door to knowledge, the artist cites multiple sources of
inspiration in his post-naturalist photographic compositions: “My theoretical references range from the American astronomer Carl Sagan, one of the founders of exobiology, to the American biologist Lynn Margulis for her theory of symbiotic interactions and the origin of the Gaia hypothesis. My work is also inspired by the book ‘Form and Growth’ by the Scottish mathematician and biologist Arcy Thompson, in which the transition from one species to another is based on a deformation of space. This vision, which complements Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, inspired the strange morphologies resulting from the forces at work on certain real or simulated exoplanets. The visual references range from the Flemish Primitive painter Jérôme Bosch to the serpentine, luminiscent choreography of the American dancer Loïe Fuller, from the Italian Mannerist movement ‘Figura serpentinata’ to the German New Objectivity photographer Karl Blossfeldt. They also refer to the naturalist and scientist Ernst Haeckel as well as to certain myths such as that of ‘Faduah’, a legendary zoophyte ‘Tartar Lamb’ plant-animal.”
The living world is therefore a starting point for the artist’s approach. The scientific advances that have led to discoveries in astrobotany feed his research applied to still images. Vincent Fournier makes them increasingly animated by applying the principle of parallax between several photographs of the same object taken from different positions and angles. The result is a plastic flip-flop of the plant, which twirls around itself only to reappear in another form, a metamorphosis that makes it both elegant and fascinating and sometimes strange and singular, in association with other planets. Indeed, he tells us: “At a time when the habitability of our Earth is at stake, the recent launches of space telescopes mark the beginning of a golden age in the exploration of habitable worlds. The aim is not to seek refuge on these exoplanets, but to gain a better understanding of the conditions under which life emerged. Somewhere between surrealism
and scientific speculation, the ‘Flora incognita’ project imagines what our terrestrial flora might look like if it grew on planets outside our solar system. This half-fantastic, half-scientific herbarium extrapolates plant life capable of adapting to extraterrestrial ecosystems and their extreme phenomena.”
By pushing his photographic research ever further, Vincent Fournier cultivates this medium of artistic expression in conjunction with innovative technologies. The artistic and visual treatment of his images is part of a creative process that ties in with his subject matter. As he describes it, “this reinvention of the living is made possible by recent digital avatars such as photogrammetry combined with 3D animation tools. These techniques make it possible to model plants with unequalled photographic precision, and then to make them ‘grow’ according to laws of physics that differ from those of the Earth. These forms of growth anticipate the development of novel plant architectures.”
‘Flora Incognita’ is therefore a body of work that is not “still life”. It takes existing flowers and plants as its starting point, in praise of the ‘Life of Plants’, to paraphrase the Italian philosopher Emanuele Coccia. Vincent Fournier also highlights the ‘intelligence’ and ‘sensitivity’ of plants, in the words of biologist Stefano Mancuso, founder of the International Plant Neurobiology Laboratory in Florence, Italy. Vincent Fournier’s photographs are a source of enchantment and (re)discovery, an astonishing face-to-face encounter with the flora of our planet and beyond. It’s a simply extraordinary encounter with oneself, a breath of vital, lyrical beauty, in a field of expression that is first and foremost aesthetic before being scientific.
Vincent Fournier is a French artist, born in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, in 1970, and currently living between Paris and Arles. He graduated from the École nationale supérieure de la Photographie in Arles in 1997. For over twenty years, Vincent Fournier has been developing an extensive body of work centered around photography. His work explores the imaginaries of the future– both past visions and those we project for tomorrow– through various series: space exploration with Space Project (2007–21), humanoid robots in The Man Machine (2009–10), utopian architecture in Brasilia (2012–19) and Kosmic Memories (2021–22), the reinvention of the living in Post Natural History (2013–22) and Auctus Animalis (2022), and most recently, the flora of exoplanets with Flora Incognita (2024–26). Select Museum & Gallery Solo Exhibitions include: Flora Incognita, Spazio Nobile, Brussels, 2025 – Space Utopia, Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie, Paris 2024 – Uchronie, Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, Paris, 2023 – Auctus Animalis, Prix Swiss Life à 4 mains, France, 2023 – Super Specimens, Sensations of the Extraordinary, Spazio Nobile, Brussels, 2022 – Post Natural History, Hangar Art Centre, Brussels, 2019 – Man Machine, Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna – MAMbo, 2017 – Post Natural History, Spazio Nobile, Brussels, 2016 – Past Forward, Rencontres d’Arles, 2013. Select of museum & institutional group exhibitions include: Past Forward, International Art Festival BIWAKO Biennale, Japan, 2025 – Post Natural History, KG+ Kyotographie, Kyoto, Japan – Space, A Visual Journey, Fotografiska Museum Stockholm, 2024 – Civilization, Jut Art Museum, Taiwan, 2024 – Science-Fiction, Centre Pompidou Metz, France, 2023 – Civilization, Saatchi Gallery, London, UK – Unknown Unknowns, Triennale de Milan, Italy, 2022 – Civilization, MUCEM Marseille, France, 2020 – Hello Robots, MMCA, Seoul, Korea – UCCA, Beijing – V&A Museum Dundee, 2019 – La Fabrique du Vivant, Centre Pompidou Paris, France, 2018 – Design et Merveilleux, MAMC, Saint-Etienne, France, 2018 – The Universe and Art, Mori Art Museums Tokyo, Japan and ArtScience Museum Singapore, 2017; A selection of acquisitions from museums and institutions include: Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, Centre Pompidou Paris, LVMH,
JP Morgan New York, Société Générale Paris, MAST Foundation Bologna, Domaine des Étangs Massignac, Vontobel Zurich, Swiss Life, Black Gold Museum, Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature Paris, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Mâcon, Fondation Bullukian Lyon, Institut français du Cambodge, Phnom Penh. The Brasilia series is on view at The Metropolitan Museum New York (The MET), Fifth Avenue, Gallery 916; Selection of Invitations: 2017: Collaboration with NASA for the Space Utopia project, working with all major American space centers, 2018: Panel discussion at the Centre Pompidou as part of the exhibition La Fabrique du Vivant
2019: Presentation at The MET for the conference In Our Time, 2023: Roundtables with authors Enki Bilal, Alain Damasio, Vinciane Despret, Christophe Galfard, Patrick Gyger, and Ariel Kyrou at Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, Paris, France, 2025: Conference at Domaine de Chaumont, Chaumont-sur-Loire, France, alongside Vinciane Despret and Cédric Sueur. Select collaborations include: Louis Vuitton, Le Bon Marché Paris, Baccarat, Isetan Tokyo, XPeng China, Columbia Pictures for the movie The Amazing Spiderman; Among his books are: Flora Incognita, Spazio Nobile Editions, 2025 – Uchronie, Filigranes, 2023 – Auctus Animalis, Filigranes, 2022 – Kosmic Memories, Noeve, 2021 – Brasilia, Noeve, 2020 – Post Natural History, Noeve, 2019 – Space Utopia, Noeve & Rizzoli, 2018
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