Château La Coste Presents STACK: A Major New Exhibition by Sean Scully, Curated by Michel Gauthier.

Château La Coste is delighted to present STACK, an exhibition of new work by Sean Scully, curated by Michel Gauthier. Marking the artist's return to the Old Wine Store Gallery eleven years after his acclaimed 2015 exhibition Different Places, STACK will be the first exhibition of one of the artist’s newest series of works, titled ‘Stack’, alongside a ‘Cactus’ painting that is also an exciting new direction for the artist and also being shown to the public for the first time, together with a selection of recent drawings as prints, that offer fresh insight into one of the most celebrated painters of our time.

At the heart of the exhibition are the eight monumental Stack paintings, all created in 2025. Executed on aluminium, these powerful works combine drawing, painting and spray paint to create layered, muscular compositions that hover between architectural weight and painterly gesture. While rooted in Sean Scully's longstanding exploration of line, rhythm and structure, the Stack series introduces a striking new visual language through the interplay of materials and techniques.

Although the term "stack" has appeared previously in the titles of Scully's sculptural works—including Shadow Stack (2018), Stack of Coins and Venice Stack—where it referred to the literal accumulation of horizontal forms, the paintings in this exhibition present a more nuanced dialogue between the vertical and the horizontal. Each canvas measures 216 × 190 cm: a portrait format that approaches the square, creating a compact field of tension.

Rendered predominantly in blacks, whites and greys, the Stack paintings are punctuated by flashes of colour, such as the vivid reds and the rich terracotta tones of Stack Three. The direct application of spray paint onto aluminium introduces an immediacy and rawness that can evoke an urban or even punk sensibility. In works such as Stack 5, dense networks of vertical and horizontal black lines are layered so intensely that only glimmers of white remain visible beneath. Yet despite their physicality and dramatic presence, these paintings retain the lyrical qualities that define Scully's practice. Their shifting rhythms, subtle transitions and interplay between hard and soft edges generate a remarkable range of emotional and visual energies.

Complementing the Stack series are three groups of works that illuminate the broader context of Scully's recent practice. Tower 2, an archival pigment print on paper translated from a drawing made on the artists’s iPhone, echoes the compositional structure of the artist's recent Tower paintings while revealing the central role of drawing in his process and the way in which artists today will use whatever materials are available to them, including the digital.

Natured is a series of 30 prints based on drawings made in an exercise book while on the island of Eleuthera during Scully's recent travels. These intimate studies of plants and the natural world reveal an often-overlooked dimension of his work, demonstrating how close observation of nature informs the rhythms, structures and spatial relationships found within his abstractions. Made in response to those drawings, the vibrant figurative painting Cactus 15 has a vivid palette that offers a striking counterpoint to the restrained tonality of the Stack paintings while underscoring the Scully's sensitive relation with nature.

Throughout the exhibition, drawing emerges as the foundational discipline of Sean Scully's practice. Rather than functioning as a preparatory stage, drawing is presented as a generative force that underpins his paintings, informs his use of brush and spray paint, and extends into other areas of his work. Together, these works reveal the enduring power of the line as the essential structure through which Scully constructs space, rhythm and emotion.

A fully illustrated catalogue, featuring an essay by Michel Gauthier, will be published to accompany the exhibition.

Michel Gauthier has been a curator at the Centre Pompidou since 2010. From 2007 to 2019 and he taught art history at the University of Paris-Sorbonne. He is the author of some thirty books. In recent years, he has curated exhibitions dedicated to Sheila Hicks, Victor Vasarely, Farid Belkahia, Martin Barré, Carlos Cruz-Diez and François Morellet. In 2024, he curated the exhibition ‘Sean Scully: A Romantic Geometry of Colors’ at the Centre Pompidou, Paris.