Fantasized, enchanted and disenchanted, the sea is in all its forms at the Carmignac Foundation.
For more than fifteen years, art and its relationship to the environment have never ceased to question institutions, curators and artists, through numerous exhibitions, debates and international conferences on the subject. For its fourth season, the Carmignac Foundation, created in 2018 on the island of Porquerolles, off the peninsula of Giens, takes a look that is both poetic and anxious on the theme.
Conceived by the American guest curator Chris Sharp, the “Imaginary Sea” exhibition explores the depth of Man’s connection to the underwater world.
In the Villa’s many Mediterranean spaces and gardens, this imaginary underwater “natural history museum”, 21st century version, brings together the works of the collection – the fountain with a hundred fish by Bruce Nauman, the underwater fresco by Miquel Barceló or lobster perched on a chair by Jeff Koons – with productions created for the occasion by, among others, plastic artists Bianca Bondi, Lin May Saeed, Kate Newby, or loans from modern and current French and international artists .
The visitor plunges with delight among the strange fish of Alisson Katz, the sponges of Yves Klein the Monochrome, gets lost in the vaulted gallery transformed into an underwater cave of Miquel Barceló, wonders in front of the coral made of sandwich bread by French visual artist Hubert Duprat …
Spectaculaire et menaçant, le squelette géant de baleine de Bianca Bondi en suspension en-dessous du bassin d’eau évoque, avec une poésie teintée d’inquiétude et de nostalgie, le cycle de la vie, de la mort, comme de la renaissance de la nature.
Sometimes mysterious, sometimes enchanted, often threatened, these visions of the marine world and its ecosystems in connection with the spirit and architecture of the place make you think. An unmissable summer exhibition, as much for the beauty of the site, the pieces on display as for the richness of their words.
Virginie Chuimer-Layen
