Jean-Michel is an artist duo composed of painters Sophie Varin and Antoine Carbonne. At first it was an androgynous alter ego to both artists, the product of its creators. Over time, they realized it was not a person but a space for free thinking, narratives and experimental work rather than an identity. Every exhibition they put up aims to tell a story – a tale even – driven by a motto that lies in the exhibition title. I Can Do It Anymore for instance was a show about adventure and renouncement. Be it in real life or in a digital one such as videogames. This collaborative body of work began in March 2021 during a residency called Casa Lu in Mexico. In these troubled times, Jean-Michel promotes the ideas of softness and fluid rela­tionships in a work field – the world of creation – that is often harsh to its actors, and mostly solitary.
Since that time Jean-Michel has had solo exhibitions in New York (Will I Dream? at IRL Gal­lery, 2021), Paris (Rage Quit at Myriam Chair Gallery, 2023), Brussels (I Can Do It Anymore at DBKA Paddock, 2023) and Knokke (Versus Water at Demain Belgium, 2023) and group exhibi­tions in Mexico City (Complices Disonantes at Casa Lu, 2021), Marseille (Si nous n’avions pas vu les etoiles at Buropolis, 2021), and Paris (Blur Me Tender at Galerie Romero Paprocki, 2022).
Jean-Michel lives and works in Brussels.

Sophie Varin (Saint-Doulchard, France, 1993) took her BA from the National Fine Art School of Paris, then studied at Hunter College School of Fine Art in New York and took her MFA at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam. Her paintings and sculptures focus on our relation to reality, and how it often means a negotiation between what you would like to see, and what you would like to hide. Depicting seemingly banal situations, her works create ambiguous scenarios.

Antoine Carbonne (Paris, France, 1987) has graduated from the National Fine Art School of Paris (ENSBA). Initially interested in comics, he turned to painting where he examined different forms of narration in the single image. Taking the form of an adventure “of which you are the hero”, his first exhibitions represent projection spaces in which everyone will be free to create narrative tension. Large format paintings allow this almost bodily immersion in landscapes of pure colors. In 2023 he returns to the representation of bodies.

Jean-Michel is an artist duo composed of painters Sophie Varin and Antoine Carbonne. At first it was an androgynous alter ego to both artists, the product of its creators. Over time, they realized it was not a person but a space for free thinking, narratives and experimental work rather than an identity. Every exhibition they put up aims to tell a story – a tale even – driven by a motto that lies in the exhibition title. I Can Do It Anymore for instance was a show about adventure and renouncement. Be it in real life or in a digital one such as videogames. This collaborative body of work began in March 2021 during a residency called Casa Lu in Mexico. In these troubled times, Jean-Michel promotes the ideas of softness and fluid rela­tionships in a work field – the world of creation – that is often harsh to its actors, and mostly solitary.
Since that time Jean-Michel has had solo exhibitions in New York (Will...

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