Vertigo (English Edition)

Catalogue of the exhibition Vertigo, presented at the Carmignac Foundation, Porquerolles (26 April - 2 November 2025).

The exhibition explores how art since the 1950s has expressed the feeling of vertigo in its most physical sense, with objects that give the sensation of swaying or moving, but also in a figurative sense, as a loss of bearings, a sensation that can sometimes cause anxiety and sometimes exhilaration, particularly when faced with natural phenomena.

The works of some sixty artists - from abstract expressionist paintings, colour field abstraction and action painting to monochrome, as well as creations that seek to break down the barriers of the pictorial medium, mobiles and installations - express a rejection of figuration in the transcription of the invisible forces of nature and favour the appearance and disappearance of forms in colour or optical effects.

The catalogue follows the thematic organisation of the exhibition, inviting visitors to experience a vertigo of the senses: from the optical vibrations of Ann Veronica Janssens and Carlos Cruz Diez to the troubled environments of Sigmar Polke, Helen Frankenthaler, Flora Moscovici and Gerahd Richter. ‘Vertigo’ is a plunge into the cosmic infinities of Mark Rothko, Otto Piene and Caroline Corbasson, an experience of emptiness with the works of James Turrell, Yves Klein and Anish Kapoor, and a journey into the sensitive landscapes of Anna-Eva Bergman, Hans Hartung and Olafur Eliasson.

The only exception to the artistic period highlighted in this exhibition is one work that stands out: a landscape by Ferdinand Hödler, a nod to the history of the representation of the sublime.