From 25th April to 15th August 2026, Château La Coste presents a major exhibition of Julian Schnabel in the Galerie des Anciens Chais, curated in dialogue with Donatien Grau. The presentation spans five decades of work, alongside new paintings conceived for the Provençal landscape.
Experimental painting techniques as a language of freedom
Schnabel’s practice is defined by an unruly approach to image-making, where wax, velvet, shattered plates, resin, and found materials enter the painting as equal agents. In works such as Jack the Bellboy (A Season in Hell) and The Edge of Victory, paint accumulates like sediment—each layer registering time, gesture, and residue.
The exhibition follows his trajectory from the early Plate Paintings to expansive works that hold abstraction and figuration in unstable balance. Shards of ceramic embedded in dense impasto fracture the surface into sculptural fields, while sailcloth works and fabric-based pieces allow wind and gravity to intervene directly in the composition.
A poetics of material and serial vision
In series such as Blind Girl, repetition becomes structure and deviation becomes language, each canvas echoing a shared framework while shifting in tone and rhythm. New paintings of Mediterranean umbrella pines, created for Château La Coste, extend this inquiry into the surrounding landscape, where perception and environment remain inseparable.
Across the exhibition, Schnabel’s work holds painting in a state of tension—between accident and control, material and image—underscoring its enduring force within contemporary practice.
Photography by WESTON WELLS for How To Spend It Magazine, 2020
Untitled (Self-Portrait), 2023 Oil, plates, and bondo on aluminum
Photography by TOM POWEL IMAGING; Private Collection, Courtesy of JULIAN SCHNABEL and VITO SCHNABEL GALLERY
Special thanks to REIBER PR
