Virginie Barré at eac. Mouans-Sartoux: “Absolue de rose” between contemporary art and the Albers-Honegger Collection

From 6 June to 15 November 2026, the Galerie du Château at eac. – Espace de l’Art Concret in Mouans-Sartoux presents Absolue de rose, a major solo exhibition by French artist Virginie Barré. The opening takes place on Friday 5 June at 6 PM, launching a journey that connects contemporary artistic practice, cinematic imagination, and a dialogue with the historic Albers-Honegger Donation.

Curated by Fabienne Grasser-Fulchéri, director of eac., with assistance from Lénaïc Roué, the exhibition stands as one of the key cultural events of the 2026 season.

Virginie Barré and “Absolue de rose”: a universe between dream, cinema, and abstraction

Active since the mid-1990s, Virginie Barré has developed a multidisciplinary practice spanning drawing, sculpture, installation, comics, and film. Her work explores the fragile boundary between reality and fiction, dream and danger, constructing a theatrical visual universe marked by irony, suspended atmospheres, and narrative depth.

Her imagery blends the grotesque and the poetic, weaving together art history, pop culture, and cinema. Influenced by filmmakers such as Agnès Varda, Jacques Demy, Stanley Kubrick, and Hayao Miyazaki, Barré creates a layered visual language that moves freely between abstraction and storytelling.

“Absolue de rose” at eac.: contemporary art and Gilles Clément’s landscape

The exhibition is closely connected to the eac. site and the landscape designed by Gilles Clément, transforming the museum space into an extension of the artistic narrative.

The title refers to the language of perfumery: “absolute” is the most concentrated essence extracted from flowers. In Mouans-Sartoux, May roses were traditionally cultivated for this purpose. Seeds, plants, and vegetal forms have long been central to Barré’s practice, acting as carriers of memory and transformation.

Works, installations, and craft: Barré’s poetic artistic language

The exhibition features new works created in collaboration with artisans, particularly around terracotta bead-making. This process generates hybrid forms between sculpture, installation, costume, and performance.

On view are also textile figures titled Les sentinelles de la joie, flags linked to the ongoing musical-theatrical project La plage des dames, as well as large necklaces made of boxwood and porcelain beads, painted garments, talismans, a magic wand, and watercolors referencing figures such as Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Charlotte Perriand, and Valentine Schlegel.

A dialogue with the Albers-Honegger Donation: abstraction in focus

A central aspect of the exhibition is its dialogue with the prestigious Albers-Honegger Donation, one of France’s most important collections of abstract and concrete art, recognized as a National Treasure.

Barré integrates works by artists such as Max Bill, Sonia Delaunay, Marcelle Cahn, Aurelie Nemours, Meret Oppenheim, Gerrit Thomas Rietveld, and Wilhelm Wagenfeld, creating a dynamic confrontation between contemporary practice and modernist abstraction.

Special attention is given to women artists and to disciplines often considered peripheral, such as decorative arts, illustration, and applied arts, offering a renewed perspective on art history.

Memory, femininity, and contemporary narratives

Absolue de rose unfolds as an interplay between art and everyday life, domestic space and artistic creation, addressing themes of memory, femininity, and motherhood.

The exhibition offers a sensitive and immersive experience where abstraction and storytelling merge into a poetic and contemporary visual language.

Mouans-Sartoux and eac.: a leading center for contemporary abstraction

The eac. – Espace de l’Art Concret is one of Europe’s key institutions dedicated to abstract and contemporary art. Its Albers-Honegger Donation, with more than 800 works, creates a unique environment where minimalism, conceptual art, design, and contemporary practices coexist.

With Absolue de rose, Virginie Barré builds a bridge between past and present, abstraction and narrative, offering an emotionally rich and conceptually layered experience.