Julian Schnabel. Untitled (Chinese Mirror Paintings)

Marco Voena, in collaboration with the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples, is pleased to present new works by the award winning American painter and film director Julian Schnabel.
The exhibition, produced by Marco Voena, comes to Italy, after its success at the recent opening of the Saatchi Gallery, London, the first free contemporary art gallery in the world. The Saatchi Gallery opened on the 9th October 2008 with the show The Revolution Continues: New Art from China; the Philips De Pury room of the museum was dedicated to this impressive series Untitled: Chinese Mirror Paintings, by Julian Schnabel.
At the Museo Capodimonte, Naples, for the duration of the summer months (2nd July - 6th September), the show will hang in the Sala Causa. This room recently housed important exhibitions of Mimmo Jodice, Louise Bourgeois and Luigi Ontani, making the Neapolitan museum one of the few exhibiting contemporary art alongside its impressive collection of Old Masters.
The paintings all share a common base: an image of an old Chinese mirror, upon which ink, spray-paint, resin and oil have been applied by the artist in spatters and brutal strokes, floes and pours. The chaos of these individual markings lend the works a poetic and dreamlike dimension. The audacious gestures and serene adulterations conjure an emblematic clash of cultures and times and render each work unique in their derivations from their shared starting point.

Julian Schnabel, born in New York in 1951, is a world renowned painter and considered one of the main protagonists of the Neo-Expressionist current of the early and mid eighties.
His works have the been the subject of major retrospectives at the Tate Gallery, London, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. They also form part of collections of various museums throughout the world, among them the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles, Reina Sofia, Madrid, and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.
Schnabel is also an acclaimed film director, realising a number of films that have received international critical recognition, such as Basquiat, 1996 and, most recently, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, 2007, winner of the Coppa Volpi for Best Director at the International Venice Film Festival and the Golden Globe for Best Director.