French artist Gilles Miquelis’s new exhibition in Cannes brings the hidden magic of the ordinary to the forefront
This spring, a subtly disorienting, intemporal universe inhabits Cannes’ Suquet des Artistes. Fleeting moments of everyday life turn them into scenes that quietly linger. The mundane becomes art in itself. This is the world eternalized in the exhibition “Gilles Miquelis ,des mondes flottantes”, and one uniquely suited for the venue, the former city morgue that has become a contemporary art space. Presenting this body of work here underlines the exhibition’s preoccupation with time, memory and transformation. The exhibition runs through 14 June 2026.
Time runs through Gilles Miquelis’s work as a guiding theme. Instead of anchoring his scenes in a specific decade, he blurs visual clues so that interiors, clothes and colours feel familiar but impossible to date. The paintings work like instant photographs, not of events but of states of mind, asking viewers to stay with them long enough for their atmosphere and small shifts in tone to come through… hence the exhibition’s name which translates to “floating worlds”.
(Left) – Gilles Miquelis, Sans titre, 2020; Fusain sur papier, 61 × 43 cm; © Gilles Miquelis / ADAGP, 2026; Cliché: Olivier Calvel; Courtesy de l’artiste et de la Galerie Eva Vautier, Nice
(Right) Gilles Miquelis, Sans titre, 2025; Huile sur toile, 50 × 40 cm; © Gilles Miquelis / ADAGP, 2026; Cliché: Olivier Calvel; Courtesy de l’artiste et de la Galerie Eva Vautier, Nice
Intimate interiors and quiet solitude
Miquelis’s figures inhabit recognisable domestic spaces – living rooms, bedrooms, everyday corners – yet they seem slightly detached, as if they were moving through a private world half a beat out of sync with ours. The rooms are calm, almost secret, and what holds them together are moments of pause, withdrawal and silence.
The viewer’s perspective is almost as if peering through a keyhole into someone’s privacy: a late afternoon that seems to stand still, the hush after an exchange, the odd sensation of being together while feeling alone. Even when several characters share the same canvas, a note of solitude persists. Luminous colour and softened contours add to the impression of drifting outside linear time, in an undefined, floating space.
Bodies, symbols, and discreet humour
Most of Miquelis’s protagonists are women, often seen from the back or in profile, apparently unconcerned by the viewer’s presence. That slight turning away emphasises their vulnerability and fragility, yet also keeps something to themselves; they are looked at, but not available.
Gilles Miquelis, Sans titre, 2018
Huile sur toile, 190 × 130 cm
© Gilles Miquelis / ADAGP, 2026
Cliché : Olivier Calvel
Courtesy de l’artiste et de la Galerie Eva Vautier, Nice
Threaded through this is a discreet, sometimes gently offbeat humour. In one recurring motif, children hold cigarettes with casual ease, folding innocence and transgression into the same image and hinting at how quickly roles and rules can shift. Elsewhere, a pose is just a touch too languid, or an object lies where it should not. These small dissonances, occasionally tinged with banal eroticism or everyday absurdity, give the paintings a quiet, subversive charge that rewards sustained looking.
An artist rooted on the Côte d’Azur
Born in 1976 in Nice, Miquelis has become a familiar presence on the Côte d’Azur art scene who has been steadily gaining ground with his recognisable oil painting practice. He often works on large canvases, sometimes as diptychs, but also explores smaller formats and more unusual supports such as tracing paper or rhodoid. Whatever the scale, the process remains the same: a rigorously constructed image followed by a decisive, swift execution. Colours are deliberately muddled as if to emphasize time rushing by. It is this tension between structure and speed that gives his floating worlds their mix of control and volatility.
His paintings have been shown at the Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain (MAMAC) in Nice, in galleries and art fairs in France and abroad, notably through his long running collaboration with Galerie Eva Vautier in Nice, and presentations in Athens and Brussels.
Courtesy Mairie de Cannes
Why this exhibition matters now
“Floating Worlds” speaks to concerns that feel very current. Its focus on interiors, isolation, interior life and stretches of stalled time echoes experiences many have had in recent years, without spelling them out. Miquelis is not interested in telling stories from beginning to end; instead, he concentrates on the fragile moments when routine tips into reverie or when the ordinary suddenly feels charged.
VISITOR INFORMATION
“Gilles Miquelis, des mondes flottantes”
Through Sunday, 14 June 2026 | Suquet des Artistes, Cannes
Admission is 4.50 € (full price), concessions available.
VENUE DETAILS
Suquet des Artistes
7 rue Saint Dizier
06400 Cannes
Tel: +33 (0)4 97 06 45 21
PHOTO CREDITS
- All images and photos courtesy Mairie de Cannes
- Lead image © Mairie de Cannes
- All other images and photos as credited
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