still motion by paul mathieu

Following the debut of Paul Mathieu’s “Still Motion” show at RALPH PUCCI New York, selections from the exhibition traveled to Château La Coste in Provence, France.  Thanks to the radical vision of owner Patrick McKillen, Château La Coste has eclipsed its primary identity as a vineyard to become an international destination for art, architecture and natural beauty. McKillen expanded the concept of “Still Motion” to include a retrospective of Paul’s work from the last decade, comprised of over forty pieces of furniture, lighting, sculpture and paintings.

Enjoy a tour of “Still Motion” at Chateau La Coste with French-language publication IDEAT. We have included a translation of the video below.   

“Still Motion” debuted at RALPH PUCCI Los Angeles on October 24th and will remain on view through March 2020.

Chateau La Coste, an organic vineyard with a small production located north of Aix en Provence is, above all, an exceptional open-air art center. On the ground, between vines, we discover sculptures by Calder or Louise Bourgeois, or pavilions designed by Jean Nouvel, Frank Gehry, Tadao Ando: the crème de la crème of contemporary art and architecture gathered here.

This Spring, the exhibition space by Renzo Piano presented for the first time designs from four corners of the world by Paul Mathieu. “For me, it’s the opportunity to bring together, how do I say, in a place completely separate and apart from where I create. Pieces made in the United States, in Italy, some in France, and all of a sudden, these pieces that are created in different places, that have never met each other before, even for me it’s great to find them all together in a place as extraordinary as these buildings by Renzo Piano. A place truly thoughtful about its environment, its relationship to nature, the vineyard, the sky. You enter from this great passage into something totally extraordinary and all of a sudden, at the bottom, you see sky and water, you have earth, water, sky, it’s heavenly.”

Situated in showrooms and a New York gallery [Ralph Pucci] where he’s been shown for more than 20 years, Paul Mathieu has created an elegance somewhere between classicism and modernism. At Chateau La Coste, he shows designs created for Ralph Pucci and Stephanie Odegard, Luxury Living Group and some created independently. However, he doesn’t feel this show is a retrospective of his work completed in the last 30 years. “I don’t so much feel a hierarchy of time—this is why I called it "Still Motion”—because there are things placed here now meeting other designs, and then the public who will meet here, and what makes me happy is that here, the public is not necessarily professional designers, just those coming here to experience and be inspired and appreciate the beauty here, not necessarily to purchase. And I hope they will appreciate the work, especially in this extraordinary place.”

“For me, I look at shapes, the material, the light, look at this molded glass table, and see how the sunlight moves through it. Or, outside, this exterior moment I created with my indoor-outdoor pieces made by Ralph Pucci, it’s this cohabitation of everything together that all of a sudden, to see them as sculpture, form.”