Lost Relative, 1998
From Wall Works
Multimedia wall painting. Photo silkscreen on acetate, framed photograph, silkscreen, and pencil line on the wall. Acetates 70 x 98 cm (27½ x 38¼ in) each, photo 41 x 30.5 cm (16 x 12 in), silkscreen mark 104 x 46 cm (41 x 18 in); overall installation size variable. Limited to 12 installations, with a signed and numbered certificate.
Julian Schnabel’s Lost Relative is a multimedia edition that brings together painting, photography, and installation in a poignant, theatrical composition. A framed portrait is flanked by two red velvet valances printed on acetate, suggestive of a vanished stage or ceremonial display. Above them, a silkscreened gestural smear in deep red breaks across the wall like a wound or memory trace, connected to the floor by a drawn pencil line. The layering of materials and motifs – photographic image, painterly mark, architectural fragment – is emblematic of Schnabel’s approach, fusing personal narrative with baroque intensity. Lost Relative feels like a shrine to someone half-remembered: part fiction, part archaeology, wholly infused with the drama and fragility of human presence.
