Romain Bernini

Henri Cartier-Bresson et Martine Franck created the Fondation in 2023 with the intention to dedicate its spaces not only to photographers of all styles and generations, but also to “painters, sculptors, and draftsmen.” After the exhibition of Alberto Giacometti’s sculptures in 2005, followed three years later by Saul Steinberg’s drawings, the Fondation now renews its commitment to presenting other types of practices by showing the paintings of Romain Bernini. For around twenty years, this French artist, born in 1979, has been developing an impressive body of work situated at the crossroads of figuration and a form of urban esotericism. He captures moments that function as hypotheses. His compositions depict latent situations in which figures in search of meaning embody kinds of living enigmas.

The series of paintings presented here for the first time is inspired by a curious little eighteenth-century book, Giphantie, by Charles Tiphaigne. Guided by a “prefect,” this journey through an imaginary land inhabited by “elemental spirits” belongs to the tradition of utopian tales. It allows its author to criticize the society of his time while giving free rein to his imagination. Published in 1760, this short work is best known for predicting the advent of modern technologies such as the remote transmission of images and sound, surveillance techniques, contact lenses, freeze-dried food, and many others. But above all, it describes—more than half a century before Nicéphore Niépce’s earliest experiments in 1816, and nearly eight decades before the official announcement of Louis Daguerre’s invention in 1839, a method of producing images that already resembles photography, and so we find our way back to it.

Curator of the exhibition
Clément Chéroux
Director, Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson

Born in 1979, Romain Bernini lives and works in Paris. He creates a body of pictorial work shaped by reflections on color and space. His figurative practice draws inspiration both from American Color Field painting and from other artistic traditions as well as popular culture. Whether depicting enigmatic scenes, masked figures, animals, or imaginary spaces, his works invite a sensory and contemplative experience, somewhere between reality and utopia.

Romain Bernini is represented by Suzanne Tarasiève Gallery (Paris) and HdM Gallery (London and Beijing). A resident at the Villa Medici in Rome in 2010–2011, he has participated in numerous exhibitions in France: Zeugma (jointly at the Abbaye Royale and the Musée d’art moderne de Fontevraud in 2025), at MO.CO in Montpellier, Parvis Contemporary Art Center in Tarbes, MUba Eugéne-Leroy in Tourcoing, Tripostal in Lille, Collége des Bernardins in Paris, Mus.e des Beaux-Arts in Chambéry, and abroad: at K11 in Wuhan and 1905 Art Space in Shenyang, China, at Daegu Art Factory and Wooyang Museum of Contemporary Art in South Korea, at the Institut Français du Cambodge in Phnom Penh… .

His works are included in numerous public collections such as the Centre Pompidou, the Centre national des arts plastiques, the Mus.e des Abattoirs in Toulouse, MAC VAL, Frac .le-de- France, and Frac des Pays de la Loire. A large tapestry has been woven from one of his works at the Cit. internationale de la Tapisserie in Aubusson.

Since 2023, he has been teaching at the école nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris.