Born in 1954 in Rabat, Youssef Amghar is a Franco-Moroccan artist who divides his creative time between the radiant light of northern Morocco in Moulay-Bousselham and the cloudy skies of the French Atlantic coast.

After studying architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Youssef Amghar studied literature at Paris XIII as well as photography courses at EFET. Artist, poet, novelist, Youssef Amghar is a complete artist but it is his poetry surrounded by blue that he expresses in his cyanotypes that won us over at Esther & Paul.

“Cyanotype, a photograph with an ancestral process, azure, as if to ward off the patina of time.

For me, cyanotype is like a return to the sources in every sense of the word. A return to the time when the image was subject to the random, the probable, almost to chance. An image is revealed by light, it is as if tamed, coaxed, desired and time and patience are its stimuli. An image is made and experienced like a journey, a journey between the lines, in an atmosphere, in the interstices of movement. Cyanotype allows me to live the time of the construction of an image, a time necessarily slow, necessarily uncertain, a time where the possible competes with the probable for its presence.

I dig on paper some of my encounters, a paper that I insolate myself as if to give a bed, a field, a construction site to my impressions, to my own presence in the world. I invite the light of day to come and fertilize this paper to reveal the image that is impregnated with it. It is an old kitchen, a kind of magic pot in which I dip my imagination as one dips one's pen in ink carefully refined by time.

Faustine Badrichani is a French artist based in Hong Kong. Her work which focuses on the female body is an exploration of femininity, highlighting colorful nude silhouettes. Her latest works are mainly on paper but she has also explored the theme of femininity through sculpture (plaster) and oil painting on large formats.

"For me, painting women is a game between what is universal and what is intimate. This exploration is endless and takes multiple forms: my characters do not have faces or are not distinct, in an attempt to highlight women as a universal entity. Conversely, their nudity reveals their intimacy..."

Faustine Badrichani is represented in New York by The Untitled Space, and in France by Galerie Esther & Paul. She regularly participates in solo and group exhibitions in Paris and New York.

Dominique Jeanne Benguigui arrived in Paris in 1969 and enrolled at the Grande Chaumière and the Beaux Arts as an independent auditor. She quickly understood that these teaching environments did not suit her and instead trained as an autodidact and in contact with Michel Triet for painting and Viviane Ambre for sculpture, two decisive encounters. She then let her creativity run wild and made oil pastel her medium of choice: sometimes raw, sometimes melted with her fingertips, the colors and volumes that appear are surprising and intoxicating. Affixed to superb papers from around the world collected during her travels, continual sources of inspiration, the result is a splendor.

Alongside her artistic activity, Dominique has also been an artist agent and worked in a gallery, which gives her a 360° view of the art world. It is thanks to encounters and the porosity of her activities that she will have her first exhibition on rue de Seine in 1976. Since then, Dominique's work, "the most beautiful in the world" as she likes to say, is a constant research that she wishes to share without moderation through her works.

Damilola Ilori is a Nigerian painter, born in 1995 (28 years old) in Oyo town. He holds a National Certificate in Education of Fine and Applied Arts from the Federal College of Education, Oyo.

Damilola is a semi-realist who expresses himself with muted colors, portrait and figurative works
with textured circles which was inspired by his life as a skater (he uses the skate's wheels). His compositions often emphasize the power of the eyes to create emotional and mental connection.

Damilola's work has been exhibited in Ibadan and Lagos, covered by The Guardian Nigeria, and is part of private collections including that of artist, Kehinde Wiley. Damilola's works has also been included in various auctions, home and abroad.

Damilola's work has been exhibited in Ibadan and Lagos, covered by The Guardian Nigeria, and is part of private collections including that of artist, Kehinde Wiley. Damilola's works has also been included in various auctions, home and abroad.

It has always been the image. An irrepressible attraction.

Images that sometimes hurt, convey pain, bring bad news. Like those MRIs and scans that have absorbed Caroline her entire career as a radiologist.

There are also images as protection, which distance the painful reality of bad news by rationalizing it, factualizing evil in a range of grays.

Finally, there is the image that soothes and carries you away, “makes music,” like those evanescent pastels by Odilon Redon that Caroline showed me one February morning in her studio, or the portraits by Titian that “grasp the soul” and transcend you.

It is this ambivalence which characterises Caroline in her relationship to her painting, to the colours and themes she chooses.

Caroline Jardin lives in Paris. She paints in her Parisian studio or in the southwest of France, near Biarritz.

Trained in architecture in the Beaux-Arts buildings, it was there that Grégoire Jobbé-Duval discovered drawing from live models. In 2010, when he moved to China as an architect, he fell in love with Chinese tools and mediums that he made his own: the depth of Chinese ink, the brushes that, depending on the pressure applied, fill with ink and then release it, the silky papers, allow Grégoire to develop an instinctive and impulsive artistic expression, as close as possible to his emotions. This search for the essential and the expression of his feelings translates into a universe made of lines, flat tints, in repetition, accumulation, rupture or harmony.

"My practice of black and white drawing is undoubtedly to be put into perspective with this idea of ​​impulse. I express myself with simple tools, without artifice, without techniques, just the impulse of a brush filled with black ink. A deep ink that can be diluted, spread out in search of its own boundaries. But also an ink that one stretches straight to express certainties dictated with force."

At the origin of everything, there is color. Often treated in a pure, primary state, it is above all the colors and their association that guide Charles Korman in the understanding of his art. Charles Korman paints on paper and canvas, he uses dry pastels and vinyl paint but it is with wood, in the French Alps that it all began:

"Carried and polished by the surf, the branches rest on the banks of Lake Geneva. A slightly stronger wave and they float back into the waves.

Those that remain are observed, moved with the tip of the foot.

Here are some on the way. The ones with harmonious curves.

They have joined the workshop, on the heights of the Gavot plateau, and will soon begin their colorful moults.

From the shores of Lake Geneva to the Alpine peaks, these are Charles’ woods.

Charles Korman lives between Paris and the Alps.

Born in Tunisia where she lived until she was 16, Hélène Krief initially turned to literature, but the artistic gesture has always been there.

A 10-year stay in Senegal introduced her to African literature and made her aware of traditional statuary as well as batik techniques; she worked on folding fabrics and flat areas on large surfaces. After 5 years in Quebec, she regularly resumed her artistic practice in Joëlle Lionne's sculpture workshop as well as in the Beaux-arts workshops of the city of Paris.

Ink, acrylic, watercolor, cyanotype, pencils, ... Hélène's works always use different mediums. From this mixture emerges a line that is unique to her, lines between curves and ruptures that bring out plant worlds that are half-abstract, half-figurative, or her "women's forms", shimmering feminine silhouettes that take us by the hand and make us discover the subtlety of her world.

Philippe Ledru is a French photographer born in the 1940s. After graduating from the Decorative Arts School in Paris, he left for Congo Brazzaville in 1967 to become a cultural attaché at the French embassy. A year later, in 1968, he produced his first photo report in Angola, alongside the Portuguese commandos. This experience would be decisive for the rest of his career.

Back in Paris in 1971, Philippe Ledru obtained his press card as an independent photographer-reporter. He then went to Cambodia in 1974 before joining the Sygma press agency. For 17 years, he traveled the world, as close as possible to major conflicts, festivals and the world of cinema. From Deauville to Cannes, via Lebanon and Afghanistan, Philippe Ledru is a privileged witness of his time. He had the opportunity to photograph many personalities of "pop" culture such as David Bowie or Jack Nicholson but also political and intellectual figures. 

After working for trend agencies and in the fashion and textile industry, Lola joined an artistic production and creation agency (Muzéo) whose tailor-made projects give a soul to hotels, coworking spaces or private and public residences. Since 2019, Lola has resumed a more personal artistic practice and brings her emotions to life through a subtle universe, a search for balance and harmony between colors, shapes and textures. The result? Delicate collages that evoke the fragility and beauty of nature.

Years spent putting her creativity at the service of major brands for their window displays, packaging and designs and then one day a blank canvas and not the slightest hesitation: "it was ready in my head" explains Sara about the genesis of her life as an artist.

What was sleeping? Sleek compositions evoking foliage and rocks, whose fresh tones applied to large linen canvases envelop you completely and provide a feeling of calm.

After having lived in Paris, Beijing and Lyon, it is ultimately the reminiscences of her childhood spent in the Swedish countryside that Sara explores and shares with us.

Sara is Swedish, she graduated from Penninghen. She exhibits in Paris at Esther & Paul, in London at the Dellasposa gallery and in Stockholm at the The Ode To gallery.

On canvas or paper, Jean-Marc's gestures follow one another, sometimes gently, sometimes only skimming the surface, sometimes violently. Paths are revealed to become spots or strokes of color, bringing a rhythm to the composition close to the plant or an imaginary landscape. The work is constructed by an accumulation of gestures, prints and accidents that end up almost completely covering the support. Nevertheless, gaps remain, revealing the beauty of the grain of the paper or canvas.

Jean-Marc Pubellier works in series: he makes 10, 15 attempts before his work of spontaneous and abstract writing reaches the perfect balance.

Gestures being essential in his work, Jean-Marc Publier works on formats ranging from 40 to 200cm.

Her influences: Joan Mitchell, Alechinsky, Cy Twombly, ...

Jean-Marc is a graduate of Decorative Arts and Penninghen. He lives in the Toulouse region.

Emilia Rodriguez Rubio grew up in the warmth and light of Almeria, in the south of Spain. In the same city as Carlos Perez Siquier, one of the pioneers of the photographic avant-garde in Spain... a nice coincidence! French at heart, she adopted the capital about ten years ago, to move more recently to Pantin.

After studying technical architecture and starting her professional life in the construction sector, she trained in photography at the municipal adult courses of the City of Paris and obtained a master's degree in Education and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya in Barcelona.

Self-taught, Bettina Sultan trained in numerous workshops including those of the Beaux-Arts in Paris and the Grande Chaumière in Montparnasse.

Since her early childhood, Bettina has made drawing her space of freedom where she appropriates and dreams reality to build an intimate and sensitive universe where the female figure occupies a preponderant place. Her work is multidisciplinary (drawing, modeling, lithography, ...) and is characterized by an economy of lines and colors that capture the essential; the softness of a face, the movement of a dance, the grace of a pose.

Francesco Vinci was born in Monopoli, Italy, in 1982. He studied visual arts at the Nicolò Barabino Artistic High School in Genoa (Italy) and continued his training in architecture at the university of the same city. At the same time, he developed a passion for photography, which he first taught himself and then developed skills through contact with friends who were professional photographers.

In early 2007, he began working as an architect and specialized in perspectivism in several architectural agencies in Genoa (OBR) and Paris (Dominique Perrault, Jean-Michel Wilmotte). These professional experiences allowed him to express and develop his skills in both the visual arts and architecture fields. In 2018, he trained in visual arts and history at the Jeu de Paume in Paris. This experience, as well as the dialogue with Emilia, led to his evolving approach to photography: documentary photography linked to the practice of architecture was combined with a growing interest in visual photography.

Emilia & Francesco are two individuals but one artist. They use photography to build imaginary representations of reality and share a poetic view of the complexity of the world. In their approach to photography, reality is diverted to describe emotions and express deep reflections on humans and life.

It is above all the intimate encounter with creation and a fascination for the human hand that made Esther want to make her profession the promotion of beauty and to open her own art gallery. The first contacts with creation came through drawing and painting, then it is through photography, from her student years that Esther continued her artistic expression, in a constant search for beauty, both in the nothings of everyday life and in grandiose landscapes.