Basile richon

Basile Richon is a Belgian/Swiss visual and sound artist, currently based between Brussels, Belgium, and Wallis, Switzerland. Born in 1990 in Switzerland, he graduated from the EDHEA Valais School of Arts (Sierre, CH), holds a BFA from ERG (Brussels, BE), and an MFA from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Brussels, BE). Alongside his practice, Basile Richon has been a faculty member at the EDHEA Valais School of Arts (Sierre, CH) since 2018.

Recent exhibitions include the Ars Musica Biennial at the Musical Instruments Museum (Brussels, BE), Cinema Nova (Brussels, BE), the Grand Hornu contemporary arts museum (Hornu, BE), Sonandes International Sound Biennial (La Paz, BO), Art Nou Festival (Barcelona, ES), Chateau Ephemere (Paris, FR), Matera Intermedia Festival (Matera, IT), and the Bex & Arts contemporary art triennial (Bex, CH).

He was a recipient of the Swiss state of Valais grant Art Pro 2020 for emerging artists, and in 2022 was awarded the Brussels Excellence Prize and the Espronceda Prize from the Espronceda Institute of Art and Culture, Barcelona. Two of the artist’s works joined the collection of the Fonds d’art contemporain of the Swiss state of Valais in 2023. He is a founding member of the Swiss Collectif Facteur, which was awarded the Swiss state of Valais Prize of Encouragement.

Basile Richon’s work primarily focuses on movement, sound, and landscape. He inquires into their coexistence and overlaps through sculptural and mechanical devices installed in specific sites shaped by anthropic activity. These devices, often referred to as machines, are intended to autonomously transcribe and respond to the fluctuations of an unstable locale, translating the environment into sound and poetic outcomes.

Often involving various disciplinary fields at the crossroads of visual arts, contemporary music, cinema, and science, Basile Richon’s practice is defined by an ongoing reflection on the functional character and workings of the instruments that give us a grasp of the world that surrounds us.