The French Riviera and neighboring Provence have long captivated artists drawn to the Mediterranean’s light, landscape, and slower rhythm of life. As summer reaches its peak and evenings gradually grow shorter, the region comes alive with visitors eager to experience everything the South of France has to offer, making it the perfect time to discover a standout Riviera exhibition.
Beyond its beaches and seaside villages, the Riviera reveals a rich cultural landscape where art is seamlessly woven into daily life. Contemporary galleries, sculpture parks, vineyard estates, and architectural landmarks invite visitors to linger, pairing art shows with world-class gastronomy, horticulture, and wine. Whether nestled among Provençal vineyards or housed within striking modern buildings, these destinations prove that the journey is just as rewarding as the exhibition itself.
“SEA, POP & SUN”
Fondation Carmignac
Hyères, France
Théo Mercier, “SeaClock,” 2026, co-produced by the artist and Fondation Carmignac. © Théo Mercier / ADAGP, Paris, 2026. Photo by Matisse Moirenc.
Channeling the Pop spirit of the 1960s and 1970s and the carefree essence of Mediterranean summers, “SEA, POP & SUN” at the Fondation Carmignac is an ode to freedom, vitality, and long sun-drenched days among the pine trees and the sea. Inspired by one of Serge Gainsbourg’s songs, the exhibition brings together nearly 80 artworks, including 15 from the Carmignac Collection. Curated by Dr. Dieter Buchhart and Dr. Anna Karina Hofbauer, it places Pop Art icons like Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Marjorie Strider, Evelyne Axell, and Martial Raysse in conversation with contemporaries including Derrick Adams, Cosima von Bonin, and Judy Chicago. Together, the artworks evoke a vision of summer that feels both saturated and nostalgic—a paradise tinged with the realities of consumer culture, yet rooted in sensuality, warmth, and joie de vivre.
What we love: At the center of this Riviera exhibition, Théo Mercier‘s new sculpture SEACLOCK sits beneath a reflective water ceiling, where a shimmering fish and seashells catch the moving light. The shifting reflections make the sandy, mutant landscape appear to expand beyond its boundaries, creating the illusion that it is continually transformed by the rhythm of the tide.
SEA, POP & SUN at Fondation Carmignac
April 25–November 1, 2026
“Philippe Austruy Collection: 25 Years of Art at Commanderie de Peyrassol”
La Commanderie de Peyrassol
Flassans-sur-Issole, France
Jacques Monory, “Dynamobile,” 1986. Oil on canvas, 151 x 231 cm. Collection Philippe Austruy, Commanderie de Peyrassol, Flassans-sur-Issole. Courtesy the artist and Commanderie de Peyrassol. ® Jean-Christophe Lett.
Celebrating the 25th anniversary of Philippe Austruy‘s acquisition of La Commanderie de Peyrassol, the Provençal estate is marking the occasion with an ambitious reinstallation of the Philippe Austruy Collection, one of Europe’s largest open-air contemporary art collections. Comprising nearly 500 works, the anniversary season invites visitors to experience the collection in entirely new ways across a destination where wine, contemporary art, gastronomy, and hospitality coexist.
The experience unfolds in three parts. First, the estate’s 1,200-square-meter art center presents a new hanging of approximately 40 paintings, sculptures, and photographs. Next comes the newly created Antechamber of the Collection, an introductory gallery connected to the wine cellar featuring 10 key works that offer an accessible entry point into the collection. Finally, for the first time, visitors can enter the collection’s reserve on guided tours, where nearly 80 rarely exhibited artworks provide a behind-the-scenes look at the preservation, management, and evolution of a private contemporary art collection. Rather than following a strict curatorial narrative, the presentation reflects Austruy’s personal vision, bringing together historic masterpieces and recent acquisitions.
What we love: The dialogue between the estate’s permanent outdoor installations and this temporary reinstallation creates an evolving portrait of the collection across architecture, vineyards, and the Provençal landscape.
“Philippe Austruy Collection: 25 Years of Art at Commanderie de Peyrassol” at La Commanderie de Peyrassol
April 1–September 30, 2026
“Salut Pablo”
Domaine du Muy
Le Muy, France
Installation view of “Salut Pablo,” 2026. Courtesy of Domaine du Muy.
At Domaine du Muy, “Salut Pablo” imagines a conversation that never happened. Inspired by Niki de Saint Phalle‘s 1973 painting “Hommage à Picasso,” the exhibition brings Picasso into dialogue with the artist across time rather than presenting a conventional retrospective. Curated by India Mahdavi, Picasso becomes the guest of honor in the Silver House, where his works interact with the estate’s architecture, gardens, and natural light.
Female figures anchor the exhibition, with portraits, ceramics, linocuts, prints, and works on paper unfolding throughout the home. Rather than isolating the works within a museum setting, the presentation integrates them into the rhythms of domestic life, allowing Picasso’s oeuvre to converse with its surroundings. His works are joined by pieces from Franz West, Mario Schifano, Liam Gillick, and Claudia Comte, creating unexpected dialogues across generations. Reflecting Picasso’s lifelong connection to the Mediterranean after settling in the South of France in the late 1940s, the Riviera exhibition reveals the remarkable breadth of his artistic output.
What we love: Instead of treating Picasso as a museum masterpiece, the Silver House welcomes him home—creating an intimate setting that feels remarkably close to the world that inspired so much of his work.
“Salut Pablo” at Domaine du Muy
July 2–September 27, 2026
Dan Flavin: “Simply Fluorescent Tubes”
Venet Foundation
Le Muy, France
Installation view of “Dan Flavin: Simply Fluorescent Tubes,” 2026. Courtesy of Venet Foundation.
Dan Flavin, untitled (to Lucie Rie, master potter), 1990, Pink blue, yellow and green fluorescent light, 183 x 41 x 62 cm © Archives Bernar Venet
Curated by Erik Verhagen, the Venet Foundation presents “Dan Flavin: Simple Fluorescent Tubes,” a show dedicated to the artist’s pioneering use of fluorescent light. Beginning with a single commercially available tube, Flavin built an entire artistic practice around one of the simplest industrial materials. Rather than altering or disguising it, he embraced its ordinary nature, proving that light itself could become sculpture.
Throughout the Riviera exhibition, fluorescent tubes are arranged in countless configurations through changes in size, number, orientation, and placement. Some works are perfectly symmetrical, while others lean into asymmetry. Mounted on walls, elevated from the floor, or tucked into corners, each installation transforms the surrounding architecture through color and light.
What we love: Working with a single everyday material, Flavin demonstrates just how expansive simplicity can be.
Dan Flavin at Venet Foundation
May 22-October 3, 2026
“Rashid Johnson, Sheree Hovsepian and Friends”
Château La Coste
Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade, France
Rashid Johnson, installation view at the Oscar Niemeyer Auditorium, on view July 5, 2026–January 31, 2027. Photo © Stéphane Aboudaram | WE ARE CONTENT(S). Courtesy of Château La Coste.
Beginning this summer through the end of January, Château La Coste presents a sequence of three interconnected exhibitions exploring friendship, collaboration, and artistic exchange. Rather than treating art as a solitary pursuit, the program highlights creative communities and the relationships that shape artistic practice across the estate’s celebrated architecture.
The first exhibition centers on Rashid Johnson, presenting paintings, sculpture, and film within Oscar Niemeyer’s fluid auditorium. Following his landmark Guggenheim retrospective, the presentation includes Sanguine, a film reflecting on three generations of the artist’s family. Running concurrently, Sheree Hovsepian takes over the Renzo Piano Pavilion with sculptural installations and two-dimensional works that examine identity as something continually reshaped through lived experience and personal encounters.
Completing the trilogy, “Rashid, Sheree and Friends…” brings together 16 artists in the Richard Rogers Gallery. Shaped by relationships rather than a single curatorial theme, this exhibition celebrates networks of care, collaboration, and mutual influence in the Riveria.
What we love: A refreshing reminder that art is rarely created in isolation—it’s built through conversation, community, and shared inspiration.
“Rashid Johnson, Sheree Hovsepian and Friends” at Château La Coste
July 5–January 31, 2027
Yoshitomo Nara: “Recent Scultpures
Château La Coste
Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade, France
Installation view of “Yoshitomo Nara: Recent Scultpures,” 2026. Courteys of the artist and Château La Coste. Photo by Remi Santolaria.
Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara returns to Château La Coste with a group of six large-scale sculptures ranging from one to two meters in height. Cast in bronze in 2024, the sculptures enlarge the artist’s hand-molded clay heads—originally palm-sized—into monumental forms. Stripped of bodies and clothing, the focus is entirely on facial expression, allowing subtle shifts in emotion to take center stage.
Rather than exposing the bronze, Nara coats each head in a matte white urethane finish that lends the works a sense of lightness, calm, and quiet introspection. Resting directly within the Riviera landscape, they appear almost like mysterious stones or celestial objects that have landed among the vineyards, not an art exhibition.
What we love: Carefully positioned by Nara himself, the sculptures evoke the quiet presence of ancient standing stones while maintaining the unmistakable innocence and emotional depth that define his work.
Yoshitomo Nara at Château La Coste
March 2026–January 2027
Sean Scully: “To Feel”
Thaddaeus Ropac Salzburg
Andräviertelm, Salzburg, Austria
Sean Scully, “La Grande Mer,” 2024-2026, oil on linen, 76 x 130 x 2 in. Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, London · Paris · Salzburg · Milan · Seoul. © Sean Scully. Photo by Elisabeth Bernstein.
At Thaddaeus Ropac Salzburg, Sean Scully‘s celebrated Wall of Light series comes to life through monumental oil paintings composed of stacked horizontal blocks of color that resemble abstract brickwork. Dominated by deep, earthy tones, each composition is punctuated by flashes of brighter color that emerge between the rhythmic bands, creating a quiet sense of movement and light.
Scully’s expressive brushwork gives the paintings an architectural quality, built through subtle shifts in hue, saturation, and the physical texture of layered paint. Despite their monumental scale, the works retain an intimate presence. Small strokes of red, blue, or ochre quietly surface between larger color fields, rewarding close viewing and revealing the artist’s hand. Although united by a simple visual language, each painting explores a distinct atmosphere, using color to evoke changing light, moods, and moments in time.
What we love: Standing just inches from the canvas reveals the richness of Scully’s process—from thick, textured brushstrokes to the nuanced layers of color that disappear from afar but come alive up close.
Sean Scully at Thaddaeus Ropac Salzburg
July 24–September 26, 2026
Not Vital: “Listening + Looking + Reaching”
Thaddaeus Ropac Salzburg
Maxglan, Salzburg, Austria
Not Vital, “The Inside of My Left & Right Ears,” 2024, Lasa marble, Each sculpture 75 x 100 x 65 cm (29,53 x 39,37 x 25,59 in). Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, London · Paris · Salzburg · Milan · Seoul. © Not Vital. Photo by Eva Herzog.
Exploring two decades of Swiss artist Not Vital‘s practice, this exhibition brings together sculptures created between 2009 and today alongside his latest series of self-portraits, highlighting the artist’s multidisciplinary approach infused with humor, surrealism, and the illogical. At its core is the landscape of the Engadin Valley, where Vital grew up and continues to draw inspiration through his nomadic lifestyle.
Throughout the Riviera exhibition, the body is never fixed but constantly evolving, much like the artist himself as he moves between painting and sculpture, often fusing the two. Oversized noses and ears lend his works a playful surrealist touch, while his self-portraits range from abstract sculptural forms to more literal depictions. White remains a constant, inspired by the snow-covered Engadin mountains and memories of his childhood. One highlight is Self-Portrait with 3 Noses, a three-meter-tall stainless steel head perched atop a column, its monumental scale playfully altering viewers’ perception.
What we love: Vital’s ability to push the self-portrait far beyond likeness, transforming identity into something endlessly imaginative.
Not Vital at Thaddaeus Ropac Salzburg
July 24–August 26, 2026
