POL TABURET

Early life and Background

Pol Taburet was born in Paris to a family of Guadeloupean heritage and lives and works in the French capital. He studied at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Paris–Cergy, completing both Bachelor and graduate degrees, and initially trained in ceramics before focusing on painting and sculpture.

Drawing on Caribbean belief systems, Guadeloupean religious and voodoo-inspired practices, and club cultures in Paris, Taburet has described his work as rooted in a very personal mythology shaped by diasporic experience, music, and nightlife. His early visibility came as he balanced art school with bartending in a Paris nightclub, where encounters with curators helped catalyse his emerging gallery and institutional career.

Pol Taburet Artworks

Pol Taburet’s artworks combine acrylic, oil, alcohol-based paint, and airbrush to create images where bright, almost neon colours collide with misty, out-of-focus faces and limbs. Working across painting and sculptural installation, Taburet stages uncanny domestic spaces, altars, and nocturnal interiors populated by beings that hover between human and spirit, often marked by fangs, glowing eyes, or weapon-like tongues.

OPERA cycle and spectral painting

From 2020 Taburet developed his signature approach through a sequence of exhibitions titled OPERA I, OPERA II, and OPERA III: ZOO “The Day of Heaven and Hell”. These projects, presented at Balice Hertling in Paris, C L E A R I N G in Los Angeles, and Lafayette Anticipations in Paris, deployed large-scale figurative paintings in which spectral characters, distorted perspectives, and saturated palettes explore thresholds between body and object, life and death.

Sculpture, installation, and expanded practice

Alongside painting, Taburet has expanded his practice into sculpture and installation, developing bronze and cement figures and hybrid forms that extend his imagery into three-dimensional space. Exhibitions such as Pol Taburet: Anamorphosis at Longlati Foundation in Shanghai and presentations at foundations in Seoul and São Paulo introduce sculptural ensembles that echo his paintings’ atmosphere of dread, humour, and ritualised performance.

Pol Taburet Exhibitions, Galleries, and Collections

Taburet’s work has been shown with leading contemporary art galleries including Balice Hertling (Paris), C L E A R I N G (Los Angeles), and Mendes Wood DM (São Paulo), which have presented key solo exhibitions and international projects. Institutional exhibitions include shows at Lafayette Anticipations (Paris), Longlati Foundation (Shanghai), SONGEUN Art and Cultural Foundation (Seoul), Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Madrid), and presentations at the Bienal de São Paulo.

His art is held in major collections such as the Pinault Collection, Lafayette Anticipations Collection, KADIST Foundation, and other significant private and public collections focused on global contemporary art. In 2022 Taburet received the Reiffers Art Initiatives Prize for young contemporary creation and cultural diversity, affirming his prominence within the new generation of French artists.

Select solo exhibitions

• Anamorphosis, Longlati Foundation, Shanghai (2024)
• Ode to Twisted Gods, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo (2023)
• OPERA III: ZOO “The Day of Heaven and Hell”, Lafayette Anticipations, Paris (2023)
• OPERA II, C L E A R I N G, Los Angeles (2022)
• OPERA I, Balice Hertling, Paris (2021)

Select group and institutional exhibitions

• SONGEUN Art and Cultural Foundation, Seoul (group exhibition, 2024)
• Collection Lambert, Avignon (group exhibition, 2024)
• Fondation d’entreprise Pernod Ricard, Paris, 24ème Prix Fondation Pernod Ricard (2022)
• Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo (large-scale sculptures, 2025)

Awards, Recognition, and Market

Taburet was awarded the Reiffers Art Initiatives Prize in 2022, a prize dedicated to young contemporary artists and cultural diversity that significantly raised his international profile. Media and curatorial commentary have described him as one of the most precocious talents of the new French art scene, with works already entering prestigious collections and appearing at art fairs such as Art Basel through his representing galleries.

Supported by blue-chip galleries and foundations, Pol Taburet’s artworks have attracted strong interest on the primary and secondary markets, with auction houses such as Sotheby’s positioning his paintings within a broader conversation about innovative, figurative contemporary art. Taburet’s visibility across exhibitions, collections, and art-market platforms has consolidated his status as a key contemporary artist for collectors, curators, and advisors focused on emerging French and Caribbean-influenced practices.

Pol Taburet FAQs

Ocula | 2026