The Inner Island

Peter Doig, 100 Years Ago, 2001 © Peter Doig. All Rights Reserved, DACS/ Adagp, Paris, 2023 / Photo © Centre Pompidou, MNAM- CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Audrey Laurans

As a mise en abyme of the insular location of the Fondation Carmignac on Porquerolles, the exhibition explores an essential driver of creation, as powerful as it is common: the distancing of reality as to reveal an interiority.

In the beginning are landscapes and bodies, landscapes in bodies then, as dreams often like to produce, a tangle of situation, situations that are blurry, pleasant, and sometimes disturbing. Faced with work acting as mirages, the gaze wanders. While contemporary art has never been as political or engaged with the world as it is now, a whole section of creation, and particularly in painting, is seemingly breaking away from it in order to offer vertiginous immersions into inner worlds and recesses. What is the significance of this current distancing from reality?

Caroline Achaintre, Brutus, 2016 / Fondation Villa Datris Collection

Corentin Grossmann, Un doute intersidéral, 2019. Collection privée, France © Courtesy of the artist and Art:Concept, Paris. Photo Nicolas Brasseur / Fondation Carmignac. Bruce Nauman, One Hundred Fish Fountain, 2005. © Fondation Carmignac – Adagp, Paris, 2021 / Photo Marc Domage

Darren Almond, Fullmoon@Sarranier, 2022 /Porquerolles island, Co-production Fondation Carmignac and the artist

Artworks by Tony Matelli, Auguste Rodin and Roy Lichtenstein. Photo Nicolas Brasseur / Fondation Carmignac

Verne Dawson, Macedonia Road, 2013 / Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro © Verne Dawson

More than 80 works by fifty artists, from private and public collections, including the Carmignac collection, but also new productions, draw the dotted outlines of an inner island, inviting each visitor to fill in the gaps in their own way. From Peter Doig to Anna-Eva Bergman, from Ali Cherri to Auguste Rodin, the exhibition proposes to confront visitors with these different worlds floating outside of known geographies and temporalities. The exhibition features archipelagos, as with Agnieszka Kurant’s installation sculpted by termites, under the water ceiling of the Villa Carmignac. Strange presences, human, animal, hybrid or supernatural, populate the place, thanks to paintings by Andrew Cranston and Verne Dawson, as well as the sculptures by Francis Uprichard and Corentin Grossmann in the gardens. We have to surrender ourselves : vertigo and tipping points await us in the either solar or crepuscular universes of Harold Ancart, Marcella Barceló, Tursic & Mille and Christine Safa.

Agnieszka Kurant, A.A.I, 2017 / Courtesy of the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York, Los Angeles / Photo Thibaut Chapotot, Fondation Carmignac

Norbert Schwontkowski, Sopot, 2010 / Courtesy Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin / Photo Jens Ziehe

Marcus Cope, Reflector, 2021. Collezione Re Rebaudengo © Courtesy the artist and ARTUNER / Francis Upritchard, Long, 2009. Courtesy de l’artiste et Kate MacGarry, London / Marcella Barceló, Pollination syndrome, 2021. Collection Carmignac © Marcella Barceló, courtesy Galerie Anne de Villepoix. Photo Nicolas Brasseur / Fondation Carmignac

Cathy Josefowitz, Portrait de Romain, 1977. Courtesy Estate de Cathy Josefowitz / Photo Nicolas Brasseur / Fondation Carmignac

Miquel Barceló, Not yet titled, 2018. Collection Carmignac © Miquel Barceló – Adagp, Paris, 2023. Photo Nicolas Brasseur / Fondation Carmignac

Sigmar Polke, Artworks. Collection Carmignac / Helen Frankenthaler – Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, New York © 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation Inc. Adagp, Paris, 2023 / Albert Oehlen – Collection Carmignac / Photo Nicolas Brasseur

Although the exhibition gives rise to a fictional, mental and abstract island, we are frequently reminded of the real Mediterranean island thanks to works which were created on Porquerolles more than a century ago (Jean-Francis Auburtin, Henri-Edmond Cross), a few years ago (Bernard Pesce, Bernard Plossu) or a few weeks before the opening (Darren Almond and Jennifer Douzenel). The island’s energy, its suspended temporality and its fragility, produces these dialogues with works whose poetry is contagious, inviting us to change scales and ask ourselves about the creative gesture and its current scope. The Inner Island is an exhibition designed by Jean-Marie Gallais, art historian and curator. Since May 2022, he has been a curator at the Pinault Collection. He was formerly the head of programming at the Centre Pompidou Metz, where he curated the exhibitions Peindre la nuit (2018-2019), Lee Ufan. Habiter le temps (2019), Folklore (2020), and Ecrire, c’est dessiner (2021).

“The starting point was the island, and the question was: what exhibition can we host here, that we could not really host elsewhere? The freedom of the theme comes from insularity: as a space apart, an island enables the invention of other realities, other worlds, it opens up the imagination. This starting point also derives from the specificity of Porquerolles Island, which welcomes a large number of tourists every summer, to the extent that its natural equilibrium is under threat. The Villa Carmignac attracts some of them, and the challenge was to produce a very open contemporary art exhibition that could embark the visitor, who would not know exactly what they would find, on an adventure in which they are the heroes, in a way. However, there is nothing heroic about it: it is a confrontation with the power of works of art, the power of evocation and imagination, of reflection, of emotion.” –Jean-Marie Gallais

Pia Krajewski, Precious Nest, 2023. Commissioned by Fondation Carmignac © Courtesy of the artist. Photo Nicolas Brasseur / Fondation Carmignac

tobong Nkanga, Tied to the Other Side (detail), 2022. Courtesy Otobong Nkanga & Galerie In Situ-fabienne leclerc, Grand Paris / Ouissem Barbouchi, Paris. Photo Nicolas Brasseur / Fondation Carmignac

Adrián Villar Rojas, The Most Beautiful of all Mothers (XII), (TheBison), 2015 © Adrián Villar Rojas, courtesy of the artist, Marian Goodman Gallery and kurimanzutto / Photo Thibaut Chapotot

Corentin Grossman, M I C M A C, 2023. Coproduction Fondation Carmignac and the artist © Courtesy of the artist. Photo Nicolas Brasseur / Fondation Carmignac

Jeremy Demester, Kali, 2022. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin | Paris | London / Alexander Calder, Striped Man, Striped Sweater, 1953. Collection Carmignac Gestion © 2023 Calder Foundation, New York / ADAGP, Paris / Caroline Achaintre, Brutus, 2016. Collection Villa Datris © Courtesy of the artist, This is Arcade, London et Art : Concept, Paris. Photo Nicolas Brasseur / Fondation Carmignac

The Artists:
Caroline Achaintre, Etel Adnan, Darren Almond, Harold Ancart, Giulia Andreani, Lucas Arruda, Jean-Francis Auburtin, Marcella Barceló, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Anna-Eva Bergman, Ragna Bley, Tim Breuer, Alexander Calder, Ali Cherri, Francesco Clemente, Marcus Cope, Andrew Cranston, Henri-Edmond Cross, Verne Dawson, Jérémy Demester, Peter Doig, Jennifer Douzenel, Antoine Espinasseau, Helen Frankenthaler, Rodney Graham, Corentin Grossmann, Simon Hantaï, Camille Henrot, David Horvitz, Cathy Josefowitz, Pia Krajewski, Agnieszka Kurant, Roy Lichtenstein, Luz Moreno & Anaïs Silvestro, Jill Mulleady, Otobong Nkanga, Albert Oehlen, Bernard Pesce, Bernard Plossu, Sigmar Polke, Auguste Rodin, Christine Safa, Edgar Sarin, Norbert Schwontkowski, Kiki Smith, Léon Spilliaert, Tursic & Mille, Francis Upritchard, Frank Walter, Christopher Wool.

With the permanent artworks:
Miquel Barceló, Huma Bhabha, Olaf Breuning, Jean Denant, Tom Friedman, Jeppe Hein, Wang Keping, Cornelia Konrads, Gonzalo Lebrija, Tony Matelli, Janaina Mello Landini, Bruce Nauman, Jaume Plensa, Michel Redolfi, Ugo Rondinone, Ed Ruscha, Tom Sachs, Nil Udo et Vhils.

The Inner Island
Curated and designed by Jean-Marie Gallais
April 29 – November 5, 2023 / Fondation Carmignac
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