Purple Art
[October 23 2015]
Julian Schnabel “Jack Climbed Up the Beanstalk to the Sky of Illimitableness Where Everything Went Backwards” at Almine Rech, Paris
Julian Schnabel’s current exhibition at Almine Rech, “Jack Climbs Up The Beanstalk to the Sky of Illimitableness Where Everything Went Backwards” presents itself as a mini-retrospective of sorts: a collection of just over half-a-dozen paintings ranging from 1986-2015. Schnable dishes out three large-scale paintings, immaculately hung and brazenly rendered in large brushstrokes of sombre lilac, like antiquated or grandmotherly Chris Wool’s; one café-au-lait coloured canvas boasting the single word: VIRTUE; three trippy and manually touched up inkjet prints of teddybear-adorned mountain goats atop majestic hillsides; and, finally, to top it all off, two recent digital collages, finished with blind and virile sprays of rosy aerosol paints. Walking through, I guess it reads a bit like a rebus, reminding the viewer that there is still virtue in abstraction, especially when it hinges on the absurd.
Text and photo Sabrina Tarasoff
