8 Must-See Solo Gallery Shows in July

Proclaimed “the most significant artist of his generation” by British art historian and Pablo Picasso biographer John Richardson and credited with “transforming the realities and possibilities of what a painting is, what it can be, and how it can be done” by Max Hollein, director of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Julian Schnabel has been at the center of the international art world since 1978, when he debuted his groundbreaking plate-paintings at Mary Boone Gallery in SoHo.

The subject of a survey of paintings from 1978 to ’87 curated by legendary art dealer Bruno Bischofberger at his son’s Chelsea gallery and another presentation of a recent series of plate-paintings referencing trees painted by Vincent Van Gogh, the New York artist is giving his hometown audience an in-depth look into an arresting selection of works that have defined his experimental, chance-based process. Blurring the boundary between abstraction and figuration while aesthetically transforming found objects and distinctive materials in poetic ways, Schnabel’s paintings on plates, wood, velvet, burlap, tarps, canvas, and theater backdrops have opened a painterly portal for a new generation of artists to explore.