VERTIGO

The Fondation Carmignac presents the exhibition VERTIGO, from April 26 to November 2, 2025, curated by Matthieu Poirier, at the Villa Carmignac on the island of Porquerolles, off the coast of Hyères.

VERTIGO echoes the dizzying experience of the Mediterranean sun, the sigh of the mistral, the spray of the sea, the telluric power deep within the earth. It resonates with the vastness of the sky and pelagic depths surrounding the island of Porquerolles, applying a brand-new lens to the connections between the perception of natural phenomena and abstract art post-1950.

VERTIGO, from the Latin vertere, to turn or transform, here refers to the blurred perception of a shifting visual field when our sensory compass spins wildly within the infinite, roiling space of nature or a work of art.

Far from being a simple reference to Alfred Hitchcock’s film, the exhibition offers a sweeping overview of the vertiginous sensations created by the exalted experience of nature, between disorientation, floating and wonder. It is organised into sixsections, each devoted to a visual register connected with landscape – water, cosmogony, air, infinity, land and abyss.

With its slowly moving mobiles, interplays of shadow and light and large-format panoramic paintings, the exhibition is an invitation to plunge into the vertigo of the gaze. It includes the colour vibrations in the works of Yves Klein, James Turrell and Jesús Rafael Soto, the cosmic voyages in the works of Olafur Eliasson, Anna-Eva Bergman and Hans Hartung, dissolution in the disturbing environments of Helen Frankenthaler, Gerhard Richter, Frank Bowling and Flora Moscovici, the optical phenomena of Ann Veronica Janssens and Carlos Cruz-Diez, and the infinite skies of Otto Piene and Caroline Corbasson.

By bringing together around fifty works from museums, institutions and private collections, as well as from the Carmignac Collection, together with works created specifically for the exhibition, VERTIGO features artists who broke free of figuration, appearance and pictures the better to question our relationship to the perceptible world.

Above and beyond the image, what remains for us of the natural landscape if not the vivid impression of its phenomena?

PRACTICAL INFORMATION

Villa Carmignac, Porquerolles Island, Var, France
Open from 26 April to 2 November 2025
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OPENING HOURS
Tuesday to Sunday. Closed every Monday.
APRIL - MAY - JUNE 10am to 6pm (last admission 4pm-4.30pm)
JULY - AUGUST 10am to 7pm (last admission 5pm-5.30pm)
Late opening on Thursdays until 10pm (last admission 8-8.30pm)
SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER - NOVEMBER 10am to 6pm (last admission 4-4.30pm)

RATE*
Full price €16
Reduced price €11
Youth price €6
Free: -12 years, press card, residents of Porquerolles, ICOM card

*Conditions on villacarmignac.com