In this new body of work in oil on wood and canvas, the artist offers a contemporary interpretation of the figure of the hermit and the voluntary solitude of saints in their mystical quest. The exhibition is accompanied by a text by Raphaël Bories, historian and curator at the MUCEM.

In her figurative works, inspired by miniatures with vibrant colors and meticulous execution, Raphaëlle Benzimra explores the desire for transcendence through the pursuit of glory, solitude, and love. She depicts heroes in complex detailed compositions, addressing themes of battle and spiritual elevation. Drawing on the vocabulary of ancient sacred texts as well as European and Asian medieval and Renaissance painting, she revisits classical poetic works such as The Conference of the Birds and Paradise Lost. Boxing appears as a recurring metaphor, drawing parallels between the world of the ring and Middle Eastern spiritual traditions.

Raphaëlle Benzimra (born in 1999 in Paris) graduated from the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2023. That same year, she received the Bertrand-Demandolx-Dedons Portrait Prize. In 2022, she was selected for the Novembre Painting Prize in Vitry at Galerie Jean Collet. She is the recipient of the Encore! Foundation residency in La Rochelle and presented a duo exhibition with Clarisse Hahn at Galerie Jousse Entreprise in Paris in 2024. Her work is currently on view at MO.CO Panacée in Montpellier in the group exhibition L’Esprit de l’atelier, featuring students from Djamel Tatah’s studio at the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris, on view until May 3, 2026.

In this exhibition, the artist presents a new body of wooden sculptures and gouache miniatures. Using forms of clothing and domestic furniture from the 18th century to the present day as ideological tools, Marion Chaillou establishes a correlation between the gendered functions of objects, their mechanisms – opening and closing systems – and bodily attitudes oriented by social roles. Her small-format paintings, images taken from her telephone and her everyday life, engage in a dialogue with the functionality of the works, questioning new forms of intimacy.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a text by curator and art critic Ana Mendoza Aldana.

In a subtle balance between abstraction and figuration, he composes images in his studio that evoke the familiar places, the streets of which he has been wandering since his childhood. Each day unfolds in colour for Nathan Bertet, who works on dozens of canvases simultaneously, which are closely arranged in his studio, keeping every scene within sight. Avenues, parks, housing estates and hills appear as singular perspectives of his home town. Polysemous and untitled, his works are open to interpretation. He paints small formats: voluptuous and harmonious mental images, in an effort to reaffirm memory without photographic support. For him, the almost mechanical perseverance of memory is essential; if it’s hesitant or it wavers, he has to physically return to the place of the memory to confirm his intuition.

Henri Bergson’s Matter and Memory[1] is a key work in understanding the painter’s practice. Within his book, Bergson explores memory and the relationship between the body and the mind, proposing that the past survives in two ways: through both motor mechanisms and independent memories. Nathan Bertet’s work mobilises these two forms of memory: the spontaneous memory of the image, appearing suddenly as a precise moment in time, which he then transposes into his painting; and the mechanical memory, where, through an almost mnemonic effort, he fixes his images in the studio, independently of their source, in an act of voluntary recall. Similar to a darkroom, his studio becomes a place where memory is revealed.

Far removed from a capitalist and “instagrammable” vision of exoticism and a far away land, Nathan Bertet pays homage to Palaiseau, a town steeped in his own intimate memories. He is an artist who loves to return to the places he travels through. He’s always in a hurry to get back to them, a haste accompanied by a joyful desire to experience familiarity at last. Everyday life, an ordinary, unobtrusive backdrop, forms a continuous, shared thread upon which all our past experiences and temporalities settle, until an extraordinary detail emerges, revealing the hidden depths of banality. The artist’s work can be situated within this interstice: Nathan Bertet provides a fresh perspective on the everyday. By untangling himself from the tumult of the present, he is able to summon the past, appreciate that which is useless, and cultivate the luxury of dreams.

The question of time and duration lies at the heart of Nathan Bertet’s radical practice, for whom each canvas is an act of resistance in the face of contemporary immediacy. His method of creation, spanning over two years, defies the imperatives of speed and productivity. He painstakingly superimposes layers of pure pigment, sometimes applying just a few strokes a day, before letting each layer dry, with a deep appreciation of the moments of painting. Inspired by the Venetian masters and American minimalism, Nathan Bertet strikes a delicate balance between representation and expression, between the presence of the object and the force of the gesture.

“Time is this very hesitation”[2], and it is precisely within this gap that his gesture is situated: Nathan Bertet deliberately lengthens time, drawing out each stage to intensify its depth. He positions himself out of step with time, refusing to intensify the rhythm of his creation. His work obliges one to slow down, affirming that art, far from yielding to the pressures of the market, can be a space where each moment deepens, unfolds, and where slowness becomes a force of revelation.

[1] Berson Henri, Matter and Memory, Paris, PUF, coll. Quadrige, 2012

[2] Berson Henri, The Creative Mind, Paris, PUF, coll. Quadrige, 1985

masha silchenko
(1993, Odessa, Ukraine)
Masha Silchenko studied at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg and graduated from the Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2021.
She previously attended the Odessa Art College (Ukraine) and Geidai, Tokyo University of the Arts, where she was introduced to traditional ceramic techniques. Her work crosses and contrasts drawing, sculpture and painting on canvas. Myths, beliefs, dreams and nightmares are tamed through a sensitive, narrative interpretation.
Masha Silchenko is currently in residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, and has taken part in residencies at the Takifuji Foundation in Japan, Komplot in Brussels, ASA Studios and Achterhaus in Hamburg. She has exhibited at DOC, Betonsalon, CAC Bretigny, Exo-Exo, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Château de Vincennes in Paris; Rodeo in London; Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof in Hamburg, Germany, Casa Filipka in Mexico, Import Export in Warsaw, Poland; Artorama art fairs

simon martin
(1991, Vitry-sur-Seine, France)
Simon Martin’s pictorial work is built on the recovery and resurgence of details, evoking the contemporary world and intimacy. « Simon Martin lays on the canvas, the substance of what he loves. People, flowers, the rest, share the same languidness, recorded on surfaces with chalky ranges, with a thoroughly mineral sensuality. Through painting, he transforms the moment into imagery, using a fiercely photographic strategy, to do with writing through light.» (Joël Riff) He obtained his master’s degree from the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2017 and studied at the Royal School of Fine Arts in Copenhagen in 2016. He is the winner of the Bertrand de Demandolx-Dedons 2017 Portrait Prize awarded from les Amis des Beaux-Arts. In 2019, he took part in Révélations Emerige and the Antoine Marin Prize.
His work was featured in solo exhibitions at the galerie Jousse Entreprise in March 2023, in 2020 and on the occasion of FIAC 2021 at Grand Palais Éphémère and in 2023 at the Peter Kilchmann Gallery in Zurich. He also took part in group  exhibitions at MO.CO in Montpellier, at Musée des Sables d’Olonnes, musée Estrine of Saint-Rémy de Provence, musée des Beaux-Arts de Dôle, MUCEM in Marseille, and at Fondation Pernod-Ricard in Paris. In 2021, one of this painting joined thecollection of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.

xolo cuintle
(San Francisco, USA, 1995 ; Paris, France, 1996)
Xolo Cuintle is an artist duo formed in 2020 by Romy Texier and Valentin Vie Binet, who live in Paris and work in Aubervilliers.
After graduating from the Ecole Duperré, the duo participated in a residency at the Manufacture des Gobelins (2019-2020, Paris) with the French Mobilier National. Xolo Cuintle produces works that challenge the boundaries between sculpture, furniture and décor. The duo create sculptures in concrete, transforming this solid, inert material into fertile ground for organically inspired ornamentation. Xolo Cuintle builds spaces on the edge of dream and simulacrum. They presented solo exhibitions at Saint-Anne Gallery (Paris) in 2021, at Galerie Chloé Salagado (Paris) in 2022, and at the ARTORAMA fair in Marseille with DS galerie (Paris) in 2023. In 2024, they participate in group shows at the Collection Lambert in Avignon, at the CAC Bretigny (Hors-les murs), or previously at the Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2023, and in several international fairs such as Alcova (Milan), Art Genève (Geneva), Artissima (Turin). In 2023, their work joined the CNAP collection, and in 2021 the Kadist collection.

Opening onto an underground milky way, Règnes is the second solo exhibition by French artist Anne-Charlotte Finel at Galerie Jousse Entreprise.

Projected onto a suspended screen, the video Sol levitates, revealing the lair of an iridescent cave. These natural hollows come to life through the artist’s camera and a flashlight: small fireworks of calcite illuminate the rock, which morphs into a constellation or a bioluminescent lagoon, crossed by the stealth, twitchy flight of bats, the cave-dwelling queens of the premises. In turn, the glittering walls and crevices round out, cracking and darkening, suggesting sensual abysses. In this enclosed space – a shelter – this zone becomes a point of departure and return, a crucible of a ballet of lives that contains, to borrow a line from Rimbaud, “the vast swarming of all embryos.”[1] The vault, with its udder-shaped stalactites, becomes the Capitoline Wolf, the mythological mother figure. Filmed in such a way, the cave prevails beyond its discovery – engravings capturing early human’s grasp of a horse’s gallop or a mammoth’s neck make only brief appearances. The subject is the earth – ownerless, undeveloped, host to a multitude of mineral, plant, and animal species. Following this first film is Respiro. Here, a breath winds its way through the material, which inflates and deflates in the form of craters and scales. This beast conjures up medieval visions of fantastic creatures – the final shot features a huge muzzle whose emanating, muffled heartbeat makes us tremble with emotion. Voiski’s electronic musical composition for the two videos accentuates the science-fiction register with sounds oscillating between deep space – radiant, expansive – and the crystalline breaths, squeaks, creaks, and sloshes of multiple ecosystems.

In two photographs, conception takes a different path: Veilleuse – eggs in apparent incubation, with marks from a felt-tip pen perceptible on their surface, and Matrice – a silhouette of a worm beginning its molt in a uranium-colored cocoon. Fertilization is no longer natural, but cultivated, governed by an invisible hand that orders, manipulates, and controls life cycles. The spider’s threads in the video Toiles reinforce this human omniscience through a kaleidoscopic immersion into a delicate geometric network, a relentless netting that traps the gaze.

Displayed in a long corridor joining the first two rooms to the last more spacious one, the series Avant la nuitprovides a breath of fresh air. Nine photographs printed on glossy paper capture great egrets gathered at sunset in arboreal dormitories. These shots seem to come from a bygone era – that of patient, sustained observation – far from drones, flashes, microscopes, and enclosures. A wind of freedom glides over the majestic white wings – the birds take off from the ground, their supple bodies fully visible in contrast to the blue sky. In this film sequence, there’s a vacancy of power, a redeeming release, a sovereign flight.

Gilles Clément’s concept of “The Third Landscape” is tangible in the artist’s practice; her videos are often set in peripheral locations, neglected sites which are richer in biodiversity in the absence of human decision. They are “space[s] expressing neither power nor submission to power.”[2] In the exhibition Règnes, Finel pursues her commitment to the idea of an unsupervised landscape ruled by the laws of nature, via the skin, with its textures and patterns. Within this close proximity and by shattering the subject’s contours, she crafts a refuge for a bestiary that moves between a supernatural and dystopian universe. The third room of the exhibition features a series of photographs that accentuate the beauty and uniqueness of living beings via the transfiguration of body into landscape. Halo’s core glows with a cluster of silkworms; iridescent water merges with scales in Pétrole; Blue – the largest format – transposes a congregation of alligators onto a colony of water lilies. In addition to varying formats, Finel also uses silk as a printing medium (Figures, Flow). Microcosme is a mise en abyme in this respect: the earthworm’s cosmic cocoon printed on the raw material secreted by the domestic silk moth (Bombyx mori).

In Praise of Risk, the philosopher and psychoanalyst Anne Dufourmantelle notes that “in fact, metaphors, nebulous images, and uncertainties describe us best. Being in suspense returns us to the penumbra, to a point of relative blindness, and to a certain manner of holding fast to this point. Holding fast, something else appears, another limit, another shore.”[3] By segmenting bodies, removing what is known from our gaze, and leaving the images untouched by any fixed interpretation, Finel creates a new imaginary world around the Unloved. She proposes an era of merged, hybrid kingdoms – which must withstand the acceptance of humans as prey. Through contact with the reptiles featured in her latest creations, Finel has become interested in the writings of Australian ecofeminist Val Plumwood. Plucked from her canoe and carried into the river depths by the jaws of a crocodile, Plumwood survived her attack and emerged from the experience deeply marked by the “scandalous” inaccuracy of her entire thought system: “I now know that an animal that can give its intended prey a misleading impression of its size, can also help them to a less misleading sense of who and what they are.”[4] Humans are also a source of food, and our physicality in no way excludes us from the food chain dynamics. According to Plumwood, the banality of our death as prey equalizes and levels out relations between species. She adds, “This crocodile-eye view is the view of an old eye, an appraising and critical eye that potentially judges the quality of human life and finds it wanting. Crocodiles are the voice of the deep past, covering the time span of the rise and extinction of many species.”[5]

How, then, can we truly risk cohabitation while preserving spaces that are home to these others? It means abolishing the very idea of hierarchy, which is firmly anchored in the matrix of our humanity, deploying empathy to share limited resources, and carrying in the crux of the soul the deepest convictions that “a forest is an ecosystem. A lichen is an ecosystem. A shoreline… A bark… A mountain… A rock… A cloud.”[6]

Horya Makhlouf

Translated by Terri Morris

The exhibition presents the outcome of the artist’s LVMH Métiers d’Arts residency in 2021, during which she had the opportunity to collaborate with craftsmen and specialists renowned for their exceptional know-how in producing works of art combining leather and silk.

For six months, Eva Nielsen set up her studio at the Tanneries Roux in Roman sur Isère and benefited from the expertise of the Twinpix workshop, which specializes in textile printing. The artist offers new substrates to her creations and brings together on the same surface two materials as opposite as leather and silk. The result is a new series of works naturally impregnated with the geographical location of the residence, the proximity of the Isère river and the omnipresence of the Vercors relief.