Born in 1991, Thomas Garnier is a French visual artist and architect whose practice explores the lifespan of the built environment through the lens of digital automation. A graduate of the ENSAPVS and Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains, he was awarded the ADAGP "Digital Arts Discovery" prize for his installation Cenotaph.
Garnier utilizes state-of-the-art production—including advanced robotics, 3D printing, and environmental engineering—to revive pre-cinematic traditions such as phantasmagoria and Pepper’s Ghost. His work functions as a "technical hauntology," where the precision of contemporary machines is used to reanimate the ghosts of architectural history. From automated concrete models that perpetually build and unbuild themselves to robotic shadow-plays of "dark factories," his installations create a dialogue between the weight of industrial remains and the ephemeral nature of the digital loop.
By merging 18th-century romantic imagery with AI-generated landscapes of servers and logistics hubs, Garnier documents a world caught between construction and decay. His practice reveals an archaeology of the present: an unstable, illusory space where the distinction between the archaic and the futuristic begins to dissolve.