10.07.26 – 27.09.26
Staring at the Sun
Exhibition of Graduates 2026
Opening on Thursday, July 9, from 6:00 PM
The 2026 Villa Arson Graduate Exhibition, entitled Staring at the Sun, invites us to “look the sun in the face.” It brings together a generation of artists who have chosen a form of lucidity that is both sharp and sensitive. Observing the tensions, flows, and paradoxes of the contemporary world, they translate their inquiries into aesthetic forms where materiality and language converge to imagine poetic and lived alternatives.
The exhibition unfolds as a three-part dialogue, three states of sensibility that respond to one another throughout the spaces. The first sequence confronts the structures and injunctions that shape our lives, exploring notions of control, norms, and repetition through the rigor of form and image. This formal tension gives way to a second phase devoted to margins and withdrawal. Here, the works become more intimate, favoring modest materials, fragile gestures, and personal narratives that inhabit interstitial spaces and re-enchant the everyday. Finally, the exhibition opens onto the stark light and vital energy of the outdoors, where artistic gestures engage with the elements to experience living processes and forge a deeper connection with the world.
Within this collective experience, artistic language itself becomes a tangible, raw material. The diversity of practices—from painting to installation, performance to video, as well as photography and music—creates a singular polyphony. Faced with the uncertainties of our time, these thirty-five voices do not offer dogmas or ready-made answers. By bringing their energies together, they instead create a shared space for reflection, where artistic creation becomes a site of vibrant and attentive emancipation.
Curator: Martha Kirszenbaum
Practical Information
Exhibition on view from July 10 to September 27, 2026
Opening hours: Daily except Tuesdays, from 2:00 PM to 7:00 PM in July and August, and from 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM in September.
Free admission – no reservation required.
Address: Villa Arson, 20 Avenue Stephen Liegeard, 06100 Nice, France
