The Source

Curator: Chiara Parisi

The Fondation Carmignac is pleased to welcome you to Villa Carmignac on the island of Porquerolles for its upcoming exhibition taking place from April 13 to November 3, 2019.

For the site’s second year of existence, the foundation has invited Chiara Parisi as a guest curator. Both the architecture of the Villa and the island itself have provided inspiration for La Source (The Source), the resulting show. Emerging from the woods, visitors are invited to take off their shoes before plunging beneath the surface of the Provençal farmhouse, where they can discover artworks from the collection, as well as important loans and new productions.

Lewis Carroll’s Wunderhorn—an artwork by Max Ernst and Édouard Carmignac’s first acquisition—is the starting point of a wall drawing by Fabrice Hyber, which immerses the viewers upon entering the exhibition. Their underground journey through a succession of rooms flooded with sunlight is a metaphor for the regenerative, vital force of a source.

When visitors stand under the water ceiling’s light well, the pivotal point of the show, they can contemplate the cross-shaped disposition of the exhibition spaces freed from cymae, and gaze over all the artworks from the most meditative to the most engaged.

The Carmignac collection is revisited exploring two main axes: the female body (Egon Schiele, Roy Lichtenstein, Thomas Ruff…) and abstraction, which can be expressionist at times (Gerhard Richter, Theaster Gates, Susan Rothenberg…). While viewers can both observe and feel observed within this unique architecture, the selection of emblematic artworks from the collection is also juxtaposed with new paintings, sculptures and installations: their presence seems either pure (De Wain Valentine’s black totem), radiant (Cyprien Gaillard’s iron hand), transformative (Forrest Bess’ mutation of matters) or simply troubling (Elmgreen & Dragset’s ambiguous mirror play). Maurizio Cattelan, as of him, mischievously condenses his most iconic works into a single new sculpture.

Next to new ephemeral productions by Bertrand Lavier and Koo Jeong-A, further spaces loom outside.

On the ground floor, the British artist Sarah Lucas’s sharp humour fills the house with chimeras for her first solo show in France, which includes a significant ensemble of over fifteen artworks. In the gardens, new works feature alongside a dozen permanent instalments, including sculptures by Jeppe Hein, Ugo Rondinone, and Ed Ruscha.

This year, the program of performances includes the birth of a sound by Pauline Sikirdji, a vision by Barbara Carlotti, as well as a gesture by Yoann Bourgeois. Starting in June on full-moon nights, visitors will also be invited to immerse themselves into the sculpture gardens and the seascape of the island, guided by the voices of Patti Smith and Charlotte Gainsbourg through a special production of the Soundwalk Collective.