Text / Chen Chi-Hsiang | Dates: October 19 – November 14 | Venue: Almine Rech Gallery, Paris

Julian Schnabel is one of the most representative artists of the American Bad Painting movement in the 1980s, famous for his "ceramic plate collage paintings" and abstract expressionist style. He was a dominant figure in the postmodern art world. Considered the most textured and expressive artist since the 1950s American Abstract Expressionism, standing before his large canvases evokes intense excitement and emotion, almost suffocating the viewer with their immense formal and color power. After holding retrospectives in major Western museums in the 1990s, he seemed to fade into obscurity, turning to filmmaking; his most famous film is about the legendary life of painter Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Nearly twenty years later, attending Julian Schnabel’s solo exhibition at a Paris gallery, I saw three large-scale abstract works from the 1990s alongside two new pieces. The older works were calmer, rigorously organized, and rich in sensibility. The new works lost their past boldness, roughness, and loose structure; the aura of a great general had completely vanished. Another series, a triptych of dogs wearing scarves on rocky terrain, was even more playful and interesting, yet not quiet or silent at all. Facing the paintings again, my previous feelings were gone. Was this an insight from my own growth process? Once again witnessing the difficulty of artistic creation, maintaining the peak of creativity proves even harder.