Michael Charles

The artist-entrepreneur

By all accounts, including his own, Michael Charles is a man in a hurry. But when he works in his Normandy studio, nothing matters more than the present moment. Conceived as a journey through time, his first exhibition, Icône(s), plays with techniques and eras by questioning the question of temporality in art. Meeting with, as he says himself, an "artarian", for whom all creation is a form of art.

You have an atypical career as an artist. For thirty years, you worked in finance...

Luckily, it was art that drove me to finance. I was eighteen years old when I had the idea of taking pictures at the finish of marathons. This did not yet exist in France. But nobody believed in me, considering my young age. I finally got an appointment with the organizer of a race in the North of France who turned out to be... blind. I thought, "This is my chance!” The man entrusted me with his marathon and I continued the experience until I got to photograph the 20 km of Paris. I bought expired film, cheaper, and asked art school students to take the pictures. Later, I looked for sponsors. A finance friend of mine suggested I meet his boss. He agreed to participate on the condition that I complete an internship in his company. That's how I started in finance, and discovered that it was, contrary to popular belief, a fabulous playground for a creative person: you can invent a world there. After several years spent in big banks, I created my own company. This did not prevent me from remaining very close to the artistic world, to continue to create and to collect.

At what age did you start creating your own works and collecting those of others?

I have always been surrounded by art. My parents were collectors. There were a lot of artists in the house. I have been drawing and making things since I was a little girl. At the age of thirteen, in 1985, in order to get my mother to stop smoking, I created my first conceptual work: the No Smoking logo made of painted cigarette butts. That same year, I used my first savings to buy a small Marilyn lithograph by Warhol. With my first bonus, I bought a work by Armanet and in the process created a "virtual doorman", a video of a New York doorman reading his diary, which I posted in the entrance of my house.

You are part of a filiation. Your father was an artist. 

I took as my artist's name Michael Charles, my first two names, as a tribute to my father, Alain Salomon, who had done the same. He was a full-time painter and sculptor since he was fifty years old. When he died, I felt the need to take over. I started producing more and more and opened an Instagram account to show my work. One day, an art critic visited me and then posted a story with my Sol LeWitt tribute piece. A German museum contacted me to buy it. That was five years ago. Three years later, I stopped my other activities in order to devote myself fully to my work as an artist. I am surrounded by creative people like my wife, an interior designer and furniture designer (Sandra Benhamou), and my children who often accompany me in my creative reflections in the studio.

What are your inspirations?

I am very inspired by conceptual art. Duchamp and the surrealists, the Ready-made, arte povera, American minimalism. Artists like Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Maurizio Catalan and Jeff Koons. I am more interested in the concept than the technique. It's actually quite easy to acquire a technique. I like works that are both monumental and minimalist, with material. And I appreciate the association of a work of art with a work of writing like On Kawara or Sophie Calle. But I remain very open to all forms of art. I need to feed my eye constantly.

What kind of collector are you?

In the beginning I was very attracted to photography, but today I am more attracted to painting and sculpture. I own a lot of work from the 1980s, especially American, such as drawings by Raymond Pettibon, Jim Shaw, photographs by Cindy Sherman, Nan Goldin and Louise Lawler. At the time, they were accessible. I love discovering new artists. I don't feel influenced by the art market. I spend a lot of time on Instagram, which has allowed artists to be discovered, like Genieve Figgis, who was spotted by Richard Prince. Instagram is the biggest gallery in the world.

​