Chiara Parisi presents “La Source” at Fondation Carmignac
After its inaugural exhibition “Sea of Desire,” the Carmignac Foundation celebrated its second year with “La Source,” curated by Chiara Parisi—formerly artistic director at the Monnaie de Paris, and now contemporary art curator at Villa Médicis in Rome. Chiara Parisi created a journey inspired by the architecture of the Villa and the island of Porquerolles, created along two major axes: the female body and abstraction. The exhibition presents sixty works from the Carmignac collection as well as important loans and new productions. Édouard and Charles Carmignac had invited personalities from the world of art and culture, as well as Porquerollais, to discover the exhibition in preview: Aline Vidal, Antoine de Galbert, Jean-Olivier Desprès, Jean-Pierre Blanc, plus artists Jean Denant (whose La Traversée is part of the Foundation’s permanent works), Bertrand Lavier, Annette Messager, Koo Jeong-A and Fabrice Hyber. It is a work by the latter, La Source (2018), which opens the exhibition and gives it its name. It is inspired by Max Ernst’s Lewis Carroll’s Wunderhorn (the first work acquired by Édouard Carmignac), a large immersive fresco. It is followed by the works of Egon Schiele, Roy Lichtenstein, Elmgreen & Dragset and Maurizio Cattelan (whose work was created especially for the exhibition). On the first floor, the British artist Sarah Lucas presents her first solo show in France with a set of fifteen pieces. The visit ends in the gardens, including new creations by Koo Jeong-A (a patio lit by thousands of Swarovski crystals), Rosa Barba (a giant balloon nestled in Pierrot le Fou’s cabin) and Cildo Meireles (an enclosed space with talc), which blend with permanent works by Jeppe Hein, Ugo Rondinone and Ed Ruscha.
