Levitation, the new exhibition at Musée de la Photographie in Nice, is an artistic documentation of bodies becoming art suspended in air and time.
“Mathieu Forget did not become a photographer by deliberate choice. One day, he was one, without deciding so, and since then, he has never stopped being one.” That apparent paradox perfectly characterizes the multidisciplinary French artist known as Forgetmat. His signature style captures dance and athletic movement through gravity-defying, levitating visuals that challenge conventional perceptions of physics and movement. A collection of his work over the past ten years is now on show at the Musée de la Photographie in Nice under the title Levitation, running from 13 June through 27 September.
Across nearly 80 works and two filmed projections, the show traces that question through different places and different energies, from the urban surfaces of New York and Paris to the more distant registers of Tokyo and Antarctica. The locations change, but the underlying tension remains the same.
BALLETSTRA Feat. Enzo Lefort | Musée des Beaux-Arts, Le Petit Palais, Paris, France, 2023 | © Mathieu Forget
Forget’s photographs are built on a contradiction that never quite resolves itself: an airborne human or an isolated frozen movement of physical exertion are not things the onlooker is expecting or used to. But beyond the undeniable visual appeal of the exhibition, it is a decade-long record of one artist returning again and again to the same central, and much deeper, question: how does a body become image without losing its physical truth?
A clue to the answer lies in Forgetmat’s personal background. The son of former French tennis great Guy Forget, Mathieu played the dynamic sport himself on a semi-professional level for a while before quitting it in 2012 to pursue studies in art, music, and especially dance in Los Angeles. Hip hop and classical dance became foundational to his artistic practice, based on discipline, rigour, and aesthetics.
Left – ACE | Court Philippe Chatrier, Roland Garros, Paris, 2022 | © Mathieu Forget
Right – TANGO TENNIS; Feat. Pauline Déroulède | Studio 258, Paris, France, 2024 | © Mathieu Forget
Eventually, and almost accidentally, the camera became the instrument where all those habits of timing, balance, and control found a single form of expression. The Flying Man, so his other moniker, is both the photo artist and the performer. He photographs himself and other dancers executing acrobatic jumps, then captures these precisely in mid-air. Working from inside it, with the memory of what a jump costs, what a pose demands, and what it feels like to hold the body in that brief and precarious zone between effort and release, this is as much self-portraiture as it is choreography.
The technique requires precise timing and positioning, from imagining the jump to choosing the location and costume, and positioning his camera to freeze bodies as they seem to float above rooftops, leap between buildings, or hang in the air like impossible photographs. The entire execution from preparation to performance is all his own work, only the shutter is pressed by an assistant.
PAPILLON BLEU Feat. Florent Manaudou | Cercle des Nageurs, Antibes, France, 2023 | © Mathieu Forget
Two kinds of energy emerge in the same photo: the visible poise of the final photograph, and the invisible exertion that made it possible. The viewer sees not simply a person in the air, but the moment of joyful release after hard concentration… another layer of the deliberate unresolved contradiction that Forgetmat aims for.
Now living between New York and Paris, Mathieu Forget’s work is shown internationally and in galleries across France. Having done tennis, dance, theatre, photography, and video, he prefers to call himself an “artist in motion” rather than being pegged in one category, and he first and foremost wants to democratise art by sharing his work with his millions of followers on Instagram and TikTok under the handle @forgetmat.
Courtesy Musée de la Photographie Charles Nègre / Ville de Nice
In the bigger picture, this exhibition follows in the footsteps of the recent Tjallinks/Jossein exhibition at the same venue, equally themed around the creative language of body movement and expression. Whether or not this was an intentional curatorial choice, we cannot say, but what both back-to-back shows do suggest is an ongoing theme of shifting the dominant contemporary narrative of physical perfection to different artistic choices to express the beauty of bodies through strength and grace rather than photo filters.
As part of the Levitation exhibition, the Niçois public has the opportunity to play the artist’s model during a photoshoot open to the general public on Monday, 15 June 2026 from 4pm to 6pm on the Quai des États-Unis, near the museum. This artistic and participatory event aims to promote contemporary art in the urban space and to create direct interaction between the artist and passers-by.
VISITOR INFORMATION
LEVITATION, Mathieu Forget | 13 June to 27 September 2026,
Musée de la Photographie Charles Nègre, Vieux Nice
Opening hours: 10am to 6pm daily; closed Mondays
Admission: €5, concessions available
VENUE DETAILS
Musée de la Photographie Charles Nègre
1 Place Pierre Gautier
06300 Nice
Tel: +33 (0)4 97 13 42 20
PHOTO CREDITS
- All photos and images courtesy Musée de la Photographie Charles Nègre / Ville de Nice and as credited
- Lead image EMPIRE STATE OF MINDS | The Edge, New York, USA, 2022 | © Mathieu Forget
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