The gardens
“The philosophy behind this project is to respect and make known the singular local bio-diversity, thus present and preserved thanks to the work of the Port-Cros National Park…”
Louis Benech, landscaper designer
The garden was designed as a “non-garden”, a natural place in which we committed to create
an equilibrium by subtraction and protection more than by addition.
In this way, pioneer and endemic plants were preserved; from the plentiful Cistuses, to the Hyères’ lavender trees, through more rare and protected species such as the Needle-leaved Broom and the Serapias, one of the most beautiful orchids.
Photo : Thibaut Chapotot
The site has been replanted with numerous olive trees to preserve its agricultural nature, and a small orchard has been added in the northern plain. Near the house built in the 1980s, exotic trees like jacarandas have been added to the exotic vegetation that has been present on the site for decades: Eucalyptus, Mimosa and varied Citrus (tangerines, oranges, lemons…).
Photo : Camille Moirenc
The trees and shrubs in the South have been landscaped so the works appear and disappear depending on the vantage point. In the North park, the works are framed by giant cane folding screens.
The Eastern terrace is the only tranquil and flat space offering a view from the villa towards the vineyards through the green oak trees. The grass walkways are mowed or in compacted soil and will change appearance with the seasons.
Louis Benech – Extract from the intent letter
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Artists from all over the world had been selected to create artworks especially inspired by the place. They spent some time on the Porquerolles’s island in order to be soaked and to imagine sculptures in resonance. They have to be discovered in the garden because they play with nature and our senses. The surrounding sculptures each question our presence in the world in their own way.
With artworks from :
Jean Denant – Alexandre Farto AKA Vhils – Jeppe Hein – Gonzalo Lebrija – Wang Keping – Olaf Breuning – Tom Friedman – NILS-UDO – Jaume Plensa – Ugo Rondinone – Ed Ruscha – Ali Cherri - Tom Sachs – Cornelia Konrads – Huma Bhabha - Adrián Villar Rojas
Jean Denant
Born in Sète, France, 1979
Jean Denant, La Traversée, 2018 - photo : C. Moirenc
La Traversée, 2018
“In the uncertainty of a psychic sea, the ever-renewed journey through the self”.
A mirrored surface cut out to represent the Mediterranean Sea, which is reflected in it, Jean
Denant’s La Traversée, celebrates a cosmopolitan territory, a place of travel, exile and migration. Integrated into the Villa wall, the work creates a mental space designed by the artist to connect us to the surrounding landscape: the sky, trees and sea that characterise the island of Porquerolles. Conceived to change according to the light and the visitor’s point of view, La Traversée is a work in constant transformation, animated by the landscape it reflects and the images of those who contemplate it.
Tom Sachs
Born in New York, United States, 1966
Photo : Camille Moirenc
Bonsaï, 2018
“I think that art is to industry as dreams are to reality”.
This Bonsaï, made up of spare parts, surprises visitors with the incongruous elements that flower at the tips of its branches: toothbrushes, cotton buds, thermometers and other accessories used to penetrate our bodies on a daily basis. Far from being chosen at random, these objects linked to our physical intimacy echo the ritual purification stage of the Japanese tea ceremony, to which the artist wanted to pay homage. The DIY dimension of the shrub – characteristic of Sachs’s practice – remains a way of deflecting, not without humour, the codes of this ancestral ceremony.
Gonzalo Lebrija
Born in Mexico City, Mexico, 1972
Photo : Jean Picon
Avion, 2018
“This is a shelter. It’s an architectonic stopping point where you can feel the warmth of the sun and meditate on the landscape”.
This giant paper plane by Gonzalo Lebrija is part of a series begun by the artist in 2001 after a plane-throwing competition held in a law office on the top floor of a building in Guadalajara, Mexico. The plane has become a recurring theme in Lebrija’s work; fascinated by the poetics of flight, he has filmed, photographed and exhibited it on several occasions. In this monumental folded structure, he takes the vulnerability of paper origami and transforms it into a solid weathering-steel shelter where the public can take shelter under one of the structure’s wings.
Jeppe Hein
Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, 1974
Photo : Camille Moirenc
Path of Emotions, 2018
“Inspired by the local landscape, Path of Emotions offers to move within a moving landscape, thus experiencing the surrounding from uncommon perspectives”.
Inspired by the shape of the yarrow flower in the Villa gardens, the labyrinth designed by Danish artist Jeppe Hein, with its five intertwined curves, evokes the Fibonacci spiral, a mathematical sequence found in nature. The installation, made entirely of mirrored panels, is designed to allow the visitor to merge with the landscape reflected in them. It invites visitors to wander through a mental space, surrounded by multiple reflections of themselves. The labyrinth, which makes us lose our bearings, nevertheless includes a well with a map on top, which will show us the way out if necessary.
VHILS
Born in Lisbon, Portugal, 1987
Photo : Camille Moirenc
Scratching the surface Porquerolles, 2018
“I dissect walls in order to make visible the invisible”.
Watching visitors as they stroll across the lawn, the giant eye that appears on one of the facades of the cabin in the north garden – featured in Jean-Luc Godard’s film Pierrot le Fou – was produced by the street artist Vhils. Its title, Scratching the Surface Porquerolles, refers to the artist’s technique of attacking the surface of the wall with a jackhammer to reveal his compositions. As a tribute to the people who make up the island’s identity, Vhils painted the faces of its inhabitants on the other facades of the cabin; their features have now become part of the landscape.
Cornelia Konrads
Born in Wuppertal, Germany, 1957
Photo : Camille Moirenc
Le Tourbillon, 2018
“The work consists of driftwood I collected along the beaches of Porquerolles. Sea currents carried each piece around the island - now they continue their travel united in a swirling movement”.
Created by Cornelia Konrads during a residency at Porquerolles, Le Tourbillon captures the natural forces at work in the island’s forests. Made from driftwood collected locally by the artist and a team from the Parc National de Port-Cros, this tornado breathes life into branches thought to be lifeless. It reflects the approach of the artist, who seeks to embody in her installations the invisible forces present in our environment. Le Tourbillon, which gives the impression of being ‘frozen’ on the spot, is one of the artist’s ‘in-between places’ where time seems to be suspended.
Huma Bhabha
Born in Karachi, Pakistan, 1962
Photo : Laurent Lecat
Receiver, 2019
“The monster, and other forms of the monstrous and grotesque, inspire me”.
An alien creature at the crossroads of genres, Receiver seems to come from both the apocalyptic future and the distant past. Cast in bronze from sculpted cork, the work reflects the multiple cultural references that permeate Huma Bhabha’s visual universe, inspired by Greek statuary, science fiction films and the cosmopolitan city of Karachi, Pakistan, where she is from. An extraterrestrial being with large ears, almost cyborg-like, whose hands clasped under its chest are reminiscent of ancient votive figures, Receiver looks like a cult figure listening to the conversations of the world.
Adrián Villar Rojas
Born in Rosario, Argentina, 1980
Photo : Camille Moirenc
The Most Beautiful of All Mothers (XII) - Bison, 2015
“I think what language calls an ‘artist’ is a reader of his/her time.”
Adrián Villar Rojas’s Bison is part of the series The Most Beautiful of All Mothers presented at the 2015 Istanbul Biennial. The series, comprising twenty-nine animals in white cement arranged on floating platforms along the banks of the Bosphorus, reveals hybrid species, the survivors of a world in the process of disappearing. Halfway between fiction and reality, Bison carries on its back the remains of a distant past, made up of animal species (a horse, a dog, a hippopotamus), various objects and organic elements, including pheasant feathers from the garden. A warning against the destructive power of man, the work envisages the end of the Anthropocene.
Wang Keping
Born in Beijing, China, 1949
Photo : Camille Moirenc
LOLO, 2018
“I use two shapes of L and two shapes of O to make this sculpture, I call her LOLO”.
Inspired by the curves of the female body, LOLO, a sculpture by the Chinese artist Wang Keping, takes its name from the ‘L’ and ‘O’ shapes that make up its silhouette. A monumental reproduction of an existing wooden sculpture, it is an ode to the fertility of the material he has been tirelessly carving, modelling and polishing since the 1970s. Inspired by tribal art, ancient statuary and Taoist philosophy, and driven by the quest for a universal form, the artist has long sought to depict a primordial Venus whose pure, timeless composition would be entirely abstract.
Olaf Breuning
Born in Schaffhausen, Switzerland, 1970
Photo : Camille Moirenc
Mother Nature, 2018
“Mother Nature will eat us, for sure, in 4.5 billion years! But until then, let’s try to be nice to her so we won’t be eaten earlier”.
A monumental sculpture whose bright red colour contrasts with the surrounding greenery, Olaf Breuning’s Mother Nature warns us of a nature threatening to devour us. Based on one of his sketches, the cartoonish three-dimensional monster captures what the Swiss artist felt when he encountered the lush vegetation of the site during his first visit to the island in 2014. Adopting a humorous tone characteristic of his whimsical visual universe, he twists the image of Mother Nature into a mad, vengeful creature, the self-appointed guardian of a protected natural area.
NILS-UDO
Born in Lauf an der Pegnitz, Germany, 1937
Photo : Nils-Udo
La Couvée, 2018
“My work is about helping people open their eyes and hearts to the reality of nature”.
Hidden from view, the five Carrara marble eggs by Nils-Udo have been placed – at the artist’s request – in the forest surrounding the Villa Carmignac. A variation on the ‘nests’ that have been the core of his artistic practice since 1978, the work reveals Nils-Udo’s obsession with the symbolism associated with this motif, evocative of paradise lost and the primordial womb. The fruit of the encounter between three elements – marble, earth and forest – La Couvée is an extraordinary scene of gestation celebrating the creative forces of nature.
Jaume Plensa
Born in Barcelona, Spain, 1955
Photo : Camille Moirenc
Les trois Alchimistes, 2018
“They [Les Trois Alchimistes] belong to this magnificent natural world, and nature has to complete my works for me”.
Jaume Plensa’s Les Trois Alchimistes assume the features of Duna, Rui Rui and Laura, three girls whose faces are turned to the sky. Reproduced in three blocks of bronze with a patina that will evolve in contact with the elements on the island, these faces invite silence and introspection. According to the artist, the forest is a space of inner transformation and the figures, with their eyes closed, guard the entrance. They are named after the medieval alchemists who explored the transformation of matter and who, in the Mediterranean tradition, are seen as metaphors for life after death.
Tom Friedman
Born in St. Louis, United States, 1965
Photo : Marc Domage
Untitled (Peeing Figure), 2018
“Art, for me, is a context to slow the viewer’s experience from their everyday life in order to think about things they haven’t thought about. Or to think in a new way”.
Caught in the act of urinating on the garden’s vegetation, trousers pulled down around the ankles like a child, Tom Friedman’s Peeing Figure was made from an aluminium model marked with everyday consumer products. Using the lost-wax casting method, it was then transformed into a stainless-steel sculpture and completed with electrical wiring representing a stream of urine. Offbeat and provocative, the work, hidden in the bushes of the park, explores our uncomfortable status as ‘voyeurs’, unsuspecting witnesses to a scene as banal as it is humorous.
Ugo Rondinone
Born in 1963, Brunnen, Suisse
Photo : Camille Moirenc
Four Seasons, 2018
“My main interest is to show the intersection between the human and the natural world, as well as the limits of human consciousness in articulating such a meeting”.
Ugo Rondinone’s figures, modelled with the tip of his index finger and on the four cardinal points, embody the faces of the four seasons: the awakening of spring, the joy of summer, the gentleness of autumn and the sleepy pout of winter. With their good nature and enigmatic appearance, they all evoke childhood memories. Their circular arrangement evokes the cycle of the seasons and alludes to the inexorable passage of time. The tone of this strange figures, shifting between frankness, confusion and melancholy, recalls the figure of the disenchanted clown, the alter ego that Rondinone has depicted in many of his installations.
Ed Ruscha
Born in Omaha, Etats-Unis, 1937
Photo : Camille Moirenc
Sea Of Desire, 2018
“I like the idea that a word becomes an image, that it almost leaves its body before returning and once again becoming a word”.
Like the large advertisement hoardings that dot the American landscape, the giant billboard installed on what used to be the Villa’s tennis court is covered by a twilight sky over which floats the title of the foundation’s inaugural exhibition, Sea of Desire. Set in Ed Ruscha’s signature Boy Scout Utility Modern typeface, which he designed in the early 1980s, the title occupies the centre of the outdoor work like a landscape. It bears witness to the artist’s strong relationship with words, the symbols and raw materials of his work. The colours of the setting sun and the surrounding pine forest evoke the sky and coast of California, where the artist lives.
Ali Cherri
Born in Beirut, Lebanon, 1976
Photo : Thibaut Chapotot