Michael Charles is a French artist born in 1972. He lives and works in Paris. His artistic sensitivity is sharpened by contact with artists and their works. It makes him grow as a spectator and bloom as an artist.

New York, 1999. Leather briefcases, vertiginous elevators. Michael Charles creates his first company in the field of finance. For him, the opacity and coldness of the banking world are a vast space of creativity. Through his entrepreneurial work, he breaks the established rules of a formatted and academic environment.
The artistic posture emerges: to shift his gaze and train others to divert theirs.

His curiosity shapes him. He was introduced to portraiture by photographing runners at the finish line of the Paris Marathon. He tries to explore the potentialities of this medium by making it dialogue with painting. He thickens and layers the photographic material. Under the precision of his brush and the finesse of his pen, it becomes a painting.

Michael Charles is interested in several modes of expression: drawing, DIY, chess. For him, art takes on its full flavor when one reaches an understanding of its codes, its rules and its history. His artistic gesture is coupled with a didactic intention. How does the small history of art illuminate the big one?

The history of his family impregnates his work. His father, Alain Salomon Benhamou, was a sculptor. His wife, Sandra Benhamou, is an interior designer. His children, in turn, cultivate the family’s artistic fiber. This filiation continuously irrigates his inspirations leading him to reflect upon art in an open and decompartmentalized way.

His work enlightens his artistic sensitivity. But more than that, it gives meaning to the singularity of his perspective on art. By exposing himself, he aspires to introduce the spectator in an original and reflexive work of "shifted copy".