Summer. I make most of my paintings in the summer. I always have since I was a little kid. I can still smell the roses in my uncle Jack’s backyard. I like to paint outside. My studio doesn’t have a roof on it. I can see better, get further away from the paintings, see them in radically different light at different times of day. The weather affects the paintings too, stains, rain, mildew, bleached by the sun, accidents, blown by the wind, nature, at first a distraction interfering then helping. It is an activated system. Freedom of materials set in water and daylight, every summer.
The artist has prepared the exhibition in a constant dialogue with the building, still based on the practically intact original spaces of the former Tobacco Factory (Tabacalera), which is soon to be restored to become the International Centre of Contemporary Culture. The project is part of a series of exhibitions in the Palazzo Venezia in Rome, in the Rotonda della Besana in Milan and in the Schloss Dernenburg in Germany, where the artist has worked with singular buildings that are laden with memories and symbolism for the local public.
The exhibition displays the whole range of registers of his work, always conceived from his painter’s outlook, his absolute freedom when using different languages as is his continuous research with materials and formats included hitherto unexhibited works, which he has conserved in his collection, together with recent works. It is also possible to appreciate series of works which have never been exhibited.
The title of the exhibition, Summer, makes reference to the way of working of the artist. For Schnabel, the summer season is the most prolific of all, as it allows him to work out in the open and introduce nature itself in his paintings.