The exhibition, Polaroïds, by the American painter and film-maker Julian Schnabel includes about 40  large size 20x24 inches (50 x 60 cm) shots. The exhibition offers a unique tableau of images from the life and work of a dazzling artist. The selection includes charismatic portraits, as well as pictures of the private rooms in Palazzo Chupi in New York (which Schnabel himself designed and decorated) and his studios in Brooklyn, Montauk, and Manhattan. Schnabel used a huge, spectacular 6 meter Polaroid camera on wheels dating from the 70s to create unusually large-format images  in both black and white and brilliant color.

The Polaroïds series is sort of a diary from the ten last years of the artist’s life. Julian Schnabel takes photos of his friends yet key figures such as Takashi Murakami, Lou Reed, Placido Domingo or Mickey Rourke. The artist allows us to enter his private life, unpretentiously thanks to these authentic and unique Polaroïds.  Aesthetically shaped yet disturbing, the photos taken since 2002 transport the viewer to another time and place.

Schnabel became famous in the early 1980s for his plate paintings. He also made a name for himself as a director and screenplay writer with his first film, which was about his friend and fellow artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat (1996) and his second film, Before Night Falls. His latest film was premier at Cannes Film Festival in May 2010. He has exhibited in all the world's greatest museums and his works can be found in outstanding public and private collections.

In the 1980s, he was invited to participate in a number of important group exhibitions such as the Biennale di Venezia, the Whitney Biennial, New York; the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf. Among the numerous retrospectives of his art one can remember the ones at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Tate Gallery in London, the Whitechapel Gallery in London, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Städtische Kunsthalle in Düsseldorf, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museo de Monterrey in Mexico, the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Saatchi Gallery in London, the Art Gallery of Ontario in Canada and at the Museo Correr in Venice.Schnabel’s works are represented in the collections of major museums: the New York Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Centre Pompidou, the Tate Gallery, the Museo Reina Sofía, the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., the National Gallery of Australia, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Basel Kunstmuseum, etc.

Curated in collaboration with Petra Giloy-Hirtz.