Ma Première Extase Était Bleue

Carole Ebtinger

November 8 - December 14 2025 - Penitentenstraat 29, 9000 Gent

BARBÉ is proud to present Carole Ebtinger (1995, VN/FR) ’s Belgian gallery debut solo exhibition “Ma Première Extase Était Bleue”. Carole Ebtinger works exclusively on paper. At first glance this is not immediately apparent, as her approach is strongly rooted in the language of abstract painting. In her practice she works like a painter, building each work layer by layer without knowing in advance when it will be finished. She uses pure ink, pastel and adds a combination of pure pigment, glue and water directly into the paper. Dry pastel is added to refine the vague, nature-inspired forms. The movements and intensity of these shapes reflect the different periods she navigates in life, where emotional awareness becomes an important influence among various personal and contextual forces.

Some titles refer to conversations with loved ones and other social relationships, while others are drawn from literature that speaks to her during the creation process. The emotional freedom she has experienced in recent years is clearly visible in the increasingly expressive gestures that emerge in her recent work. The solo exhibition ‘Ma Première Extase Était Bleue’ reveals this newly found, ecstatic sense of freedom and happiness through captivating colours, movement and layered materiality.

Carole Ebtinger graduated with a Masters in Drawing from La Cambre (Brussels, 2018) and was awarded the Eeckman Art Prize by Art on Paper, Brussels (2021). This year she finished her residency at The Fores Project in London (UK) and has had a solo in London (UK) (South Parade in 2023) and Los Angeles (USA) (Sarah Brook gallery in 2023 and 2025). In the past years she also participated in several group shows at Barbé gallery and many other venues. Her solo show at BARBÉ ‘Ma Première Extase Était Bleue’ is her Belgian gallery solo debut.

Ma Première Extase Était Bleue

The title of her solo exhibition originates from a conversation with her father, in which she recalled the story of Wednesday, a painting that embodies a moment she will cherish for the rest of her life. For Ebtinger, that moment was a kind of letting go; close to a form of pleasure she had never experienced before. It was a state of perfect confusion: between what she saw, the actions taking place, and the uncanny sensation of becoming one with the image before her. A space where body turns invisible, the viewer becomes actor, and the act itself transforms into something emotional.

She describes this experience as her first ecstasy, an encounter with pleasure through her practice. The title is also a gesture of gratitude. Towards her father, whose unwavering support allows her to articulate the otherwise inexpressible. And towards her therapist, since Wednesday was the day of their sessions. With time, these conversations have given her peace with the past and the freedom to embrace her own rhythm in her artistic practice. Today, Ebtinger speaks of this freedom as the ability to give each work the love it deserves before it leaves her — a process of release that is at once intimate, painful, and ecstatic.

Text by Olivia Rumsey (Associate Director The Fores Project, London, UK)

Carole Ebtinger is a French artist born in Vietnam in 1995 and currently living in Brussels. Carole Ebtinger’s work rejects ideas of divine inspiration. In the studio, it’s Ebtinger and the materials caught in an exchange of feeling-making-making-feeling. The artist responds to the press of pastel in hand and in turn the press of pastel against paper. The work is built in layers of pigment, ink and pastel as Ebtinger responds to what appears in front of them. Marks range from brazen to tentative, small licks of ink contrast fervourous pastel. Through the process, the artist starts to covet certain marks, guarding them from new ones, these become gently cradled by the rushing stream of mark-marking. When the works are finished, it’s these marks that appear to glow from within the piece. The works thrum with energy like they could shift and change at any moment. Like they are shifting and changing, in a state of flux, as a viewer’s eyes rove, as we stand back or move closer, so the marks sit differently against one another. Motion flows through the paintings, in an underlying current, like those we find in nature; in the sea, in the wind before a storm, and those we find in the body; the swirling of intense emotion in the gut, the syrupy shift of heartbreak that flows in waves from the chest. There’s a poetic nature to the work, a reflection of the artist’s internal world put to paper, a kind of emotional diary. Some works feel like departures, farewells, reminiscence – heartache. Others, a rediscovery, a careful mapping of new feelings and hopeful beginnings. A piece could take a matter of hours, or be mulled over across long periods before Ebtinger feels they are complete, only finished once the artist has settled with them. Working across several works at once, pieces in the same series communicate with each other, different stories written in the same pen. (Text by Olivia Rumsey)

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Carole Ebtinger works exclusively on paper. At first glance this is not immediately apparent, as her approach is strongly rooted in the language of abstract painting. In her practice she works like a painter, building each work layer by layer without knowing in advance when it will be finished. She uses pure ink, pastel and rubs pigment directly into the paper. Pastel and charcoal are added to refine the vague, nature-inspired forms. The movements and intensity of these shapes reflect the different periods she navigates in life, where emotional awareness becomes an important influence among various personal and contextual forces.

Some titles refer to conversations with loved ones and other social relationships, while others are drawn from literature that speaks to her during the creation process. The emotional freedom she has experienced in recent years is clearly visible in the increasingly expressive gestures that emerge in her recent work. The solo exhibition ‘Ma Première Extase Était Bleue’ reveals this newly found, ecstatic sense of freedom and happiness through captivating colours, movement and layered materiality.