With Design Parade Postponed Until 2021, the Cities of Hyères and Toulon Took Their Exhibitions (Mostly) Outside

Like most international art and design festivals this year, the annual Design Parade — which typically takes place across two cities in the south of France and is on record as one of our favorites — was forced to postpone its summer edition until 2021. Somehow, these restrictions don’t seem to have reduced the activity in Hyères and Toulon by much. In Toulon, the common thread of the city’s summer exhibitions — which have moved primarily outside, and are on view until October 31 — is Alexander Benjamin Navet, the French artist who won the Grand Prix de Design Parade Toulon in 2017. Navet’s colorful line drawings and saturated paintings are splashed all over the façade of the town’s Hôtel des Arts (which hosts inside an exhibition of photographs by François Halard); painted fresco-style inside the courtyard at Ancien Évêché, a former bishop’s palace (which also showcases the furniture work of Benoît Maire), and hung as free-standing works of art at key intersections throughout the city.

In Hyères, young artists were invited for residencies, including Antoine Carbonne, who painted frescoes directly onto the walls of the swimming pool, the squash courts, and the gymnasium. In the paintings, Carbonne recreates moments in the lives of the villa’s patrons, Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles, but fades them as if burned by the sun and the passage of time. In town, Villa Noailles has opened an annex, with an interior designed by Superpoly, for future exhibitions. And the villa’s permanent exhibition has been updated to include the work of more recent artists, such as Pierre Chareau and Eileen Gray.