Rashid Johnson and Sheree Hovsepian Fill Château La Coste with Friends
This summer, exhibitions linking art and architecture unfold across the sprawling Provençal estate
This summer’s suite of exhibitions at Château La Coste in the south of France is very much a family affair. Rashid Johnson has taken on the glass-walled pavilion that was architect Oscar Niemeyer’s final built project, while fellow artist Sheree Hovsepian has her own work in the gallery designed by Renzo Piano. Together, the pair have also assembled a glorious array of work by their friends—including Galerie Creative Mind Sarah Sze, Hank Willis Thomas, and Idris Kahn—to hang in the elegant space by late architect Richard Rogers. Another final project, Rogers’ small building cantilevers off a hillside and offers a stunning framed view of the Luberon countryside through its end window.
“It began when Rashid first visited us,” says Paddy McKillen, the Irish founder of Château La Coste, who for more than 15 years has developed the sprawling countryside estate into an internationally acclaimed sculpture park and world-class hospitality destination. There are now two hotels and a handful of restaurants on the site—not to mention rolling vineyards and a winery designed by French architect Jean Nouvel. “Rashid stood in front of the Niemeyer Pavilion and was captivated by the landscape, the architecture and the possibilities it offered,” recalls McKillen.
Johnson, a conceptual artist who started out in photography and now works across a wide range of media, chose to focus on sculpture here, placing a small selection of bronze artworks in the pavilion’s light-drenched interior. Large seats and daybeds are an existing part of his repertoire, while a new work—a huge table, its surface appearing gluey and gouged—invites visitors to stop, rest, and gather around it. “Anyone who’s spent at Château La Coste knows there’s a lot of walking involved,” says Johnson, “so I wanted to provide places for people to sit on. Then the gallery becomes a space for rest, a space of peace.”
The table is equally emblematic of Château La Coste’s great conviviality. Its restaurants are always full—from Francis Mallmann’s Argentinian grill to the Tadao Ando–designed Brasserie—and McKillen is also a fabulous host. The opening of Johnson and Hovsepian’s exhibitions was marked with a Sunday lunch for 250 attendees under the shade of trees; guests included Michael Stipe and Darren Star, plus a number of the artists on show in the Rogers gallery.
“The painting I chose for the space works with the idea of a painting as a window onto the world,” explains Sze of her work Plot Twist (2025), its surface layered and collaged with polymers, inks, and paints. “It’s also a portal into the interior of the mind’s eye.” Willis Thomas, meanwhile, explains that Johnson has been encouraging him to paint. “The colorful painting in this show is an outgrowth of that,” he says of an abstract intermingling of UV printing sprayed with metallics and fluorescents.
Johnson’s use of bronze is echoed in the sculptures that Hovsepian has chosen to show in the Piano gallery, and her largest works to date. Totemic and curvaceous, Johnson describes them as “pregnant Giacomettis.” “Their fullness and weight creates a tension between fragility and monumentality,” says Hosvepian.
Back in the Niemeyer Pavilion, meanwhile, Johnson discusses the unique nature of the Brazilian architect’s building. “There isn’t a straight wall in the whole space,” he says. “There are no straight lines, it’s unorthodox. But I have some experience with that.” He is referring to his major mid-career exhibition which took over the famously circular Guggenheim rotunda in 2025. The form of Johnson’s seats and table are equally unorthogonal, shaped like the sharp oval that occurs where two circles overlap, or perhaps an African shield. “I grew up with a mother who’s an African history professor,” says Johnson “We had a number of African shields and masks in our home, so it’s a shape I’m fully aware of.”
He is, though, more interested in the idea of middleness: he refers to the meeting point of circles in a Venn Diagram. It is a concept that figures strongly in the film Sanguine, which is also showing. At times almost surreal in its imagery, Johnson shows himself with his father and his son, himself as the middle part of this trans-generational group. “It’s a reflection on what that feels like,” he says.
“This is the first time we’ve presented three interconnected exhibitions,” says McKillen. “But creating ambitious collaborations has always been at the heart of Château La Coste. We are always looking for new possibilities, new conversations.” What emerges here is a celebration of family and friendships, the convening of people, and the importance of networks. And where better than in the heart of the Provençal countryside?