Next month, Les Abattoirs will unveil its grand retrospective dedicated to Jean-Charles de Castelbajac. Titled L’Imagination au pouvoir—or Imagination at Work—the exhibition celebrates the expansive, cross-disciplinary career of the French artist and designer, whose influence has long extended beyond the confines of fashion.
The Toulouse-based museum will present almost 300 works, spanning clothing, photography, design objects and drawings. Each piece is anchored in de Castelbajac’s unmistakable visual language and his enduring commitment to fusing art, design and popular culture into a single dialogue.
L’Imagination au pouvoir traces the arc of de Castelbajac’s six-decade career and highlights some of his most iconic collaborations with Keith Haring, Robert Mapplethorpe, Lady Gaga and Malcolm McLaren. It also showcases his more recent sacred commissions for Notre-Dame de Paris.
Born in 1949, the now 75-year-old artist has remained remarkably consistent in his approach. His signature palette of blue, yellow and red runs as a constant thread through his work, as does his fascination with heraldry, vexillology and semiotics. Combined with influences from pop art and the imaginative realm of childhood, these interests have shaped a prolific, multifaceted body of work that reveals its full scope and resonance when placed together.
Among the standout moments in his career are his liturgical designs for Pope John Paul II, bishops and priests during World Youth Day in 1997, his two collections for Courrèges in 1993 and his monumental 3,700 m² fresco for Orly Airport in Paris in 2015. Seen collectively, these works demonstrate the breadth and ambition of his creative universe and show just how expansive the world of design can be.
The exhibition is further enriched by an original composition by Vladimir Cauchemar, adding another layer of atmosphere to a retrospective that promises to be as imaginative as its title suggests.
The exhibition will run from 12 December 2025 to 23 August 2026.
