Julian Schnabel

5th Floor, 8 March - 13 April

The debut exhibition by Julian Schnabel (b. 1953) at the Mary Boone Gallery in New York in 1979 was a sensation which overnight transformed him from an unknown restaurant chef to one of the most sought-after stars of the art world. He became the controversial icon of 1980s American art; a bad boy and ‘enfant terrible' of the New York art scene, maligned by critics and loved by collectors, who was renowned as much for the huge size of his works as for his eccentric personality.

Exhibited at Kiasma is a retrospective of the works from 1980s to this day from the productive artist. Julian Schnabel created his early works on unusual materials, filling vast water-tight tarpaulins with objects added into thick paint layers: with broken dishes or hand-picked, aged "things" with their own history. The calm and even ascetic visual language of his newer works is a complete opposite to these "saucer paintings".

Julian Schnabel is also a film director. He has said that he will use any tools available to express his own desires, but considers himself to be a painter, irrespective of what technique he is using. In 1995, Schnabel wrote and directed the film Basquiat, and, after this success, two more films, Before Night Falls (1999) and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007). For the latter, he won the award for Best Director at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.

-Satu Metsola