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In Benoit Fleury’s work, sculpture emerges from an instinctive and almost carnal relationship with matter. Heir to a gesture transmitted by his father, a cabinetmaker‑sculptor, he shifts its purpose, seeking not perfection but the truth of the wood. Uprooted roots, burnt trunks and fragments rescued from fires become the partners of a patient dialogue in which the artist corrects nothing; he accompanies what the material already carries.

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Working in direct carving, Benoit Fleury follows the internal lines of the wood, its veins, torsions and accidents. From this attentive listening arises an organic evidence, the sculptures seeming to surface on their own, as if released from what prevented their appearance. The simplicity of the lines is never minimalism but a form of refinement that allows movement to breathe and emotion to emerge.

 

His work is built on a founding tension: the roughness of raw wood with its knots, burns and crevices converses with the purity of sculpted surfaces. This duality continues in his lost‑wax bronzes, where dark, charred areas meet polished highlights that evoke gold. Shadow and light, chaos and order, wound and softness form the artist’s signature.

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As an heir to Brancusi, Hepworth, Moore and Isamu Noguchi in his search for essential form and his refusal of anecdote, he also joins the concerns of Arte Povera, particularly Giuseppe Penone, for whom wood is a living organism bearing memory.

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The use of burnt material, recalling the experiments of David Nash or the silhouettes of Christian Lapie, has nothing spectacular in Fleury’s practice; it simply belongs to a process of revelation, a way of placing in tension the scar left by forest fires on vegetation.

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Giving a second life to wounded wood, revealing the beauty of a burnt fragment, transforming a root into movement: this is the strength of Benoit Fleury.

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His sculptures carry the memory of landscapes, rescued fragments, transfigured remnants, and possess an almost archaeological dimension. Each piece becomes a witness, a portion of the world brought back into the light.

Through the nobility of the materials, the density of textures and the strength of the silhouettes, his works, with their natural palette of deep browns, blacks, golds and mineral greys, harmonize with contemporary architecture while bringing an organic warmth.

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For about ten years, Benoit Fleury has exhibited in numerous international salons and events, and his work is now represented by several French galleries.