A must-see this summer: the VERTIGO exhibition at Villa Carmignac, on view through 2 November 2025.

From April 26 to November 2, 2025, the Fondation Carmignac presents the exhibition VERTIGO, curated by Matthieu Poirier, at Villa Carmignac on the unspoiled 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.

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.

Highlight: The exhibition offers a rare opportunity to admire the large-scale painting Mémoire du regard (1989), an oil on canvas by Chu Teh-Chun. ‘Steeped in painting both classical and modern, Asian and Western, Chu’s art recreates the memory of a landscape, the dynamic essence of gesture, and the brilliance of light. This study, by placing his work in its context, using parallels, analogies, and other resonances, focuses on the singularity of his approach to abstraction, underpinned by the organic logic of the living world, by natural phenomena, forms, forces, and by their eruptive fluidity and cosmogonic revolutions.’ Matthieu Poirier, In Nebula, Editions Gallimard, 2024.

Photos : © Thibaut CHAPOTOT

Mémoire du regard – huile sur toile – 1989 © ADAGP 2025 Paris / Fondation CHU Teh-Chun