For his second exhibition at Eden Rock - St Barths, a place where the winds meet, the artist has created a series of 10 flags that will be exhibited on the beach outside the gallery, a series of drawings on lightweight cigarette paper, painted in Japanese ink, to tell stories imagined, serene scenes with literary evocations like Robinson Crusoe, the sea, strange animals, wild nature, far away from all the turmoil of today’s society and In a triptych canvas, Castelbajac has painted the forms of Matisse, somewhere between clouds and flowers. Castelbajac’s new works represents hope, and the idea that the wind carries these images of hope that can then travel around the world with messages of sharing, fraternity and love. There may be a form of naivete in this series, as in the recent exhibition of Rousseau there is a desire for things more related to the heart than the intellect. A word to name this exhibition in Spanish would be “Esperanza”, in French “Espérance” and in English ”Winds of Changes.”

Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, born November 28, 1949 in Casablanca (Morocco), is a French fashion designer descendant of an old noble family of Bigorre, but also a costume designer, a fashion designer, author and artist. After various experiences in the ready-to-wear in the 1970s, he founded his fashion house bearing his name in the early 1980s and made it known to the public by its full innovative approach to recycling and references to his childhood or to art, all in an often very colorful atmosphere. He dressed throughout his career many artists and celebrities; these personalities, like Farah Fawcett, Vanessa Paradis or Lady Gaga, has offered him a high exposure by wearing some of his most iconic designs, sometimes dressed in teddybears or frogs. The same generation of Thierry Mugler, Claude Montana, Jean Paul Gaultier and Kenzo Takada, Castelabajac is in the 1980s one of the “young creators” renewing the fashion of the time, refusing conformism of traditional high fashion. Notable exhibitions were held in New York and London and in 1982 his fashion parade of dresses painted by Jean-Charles Blais, Combas, Hervé Di Rosa, Ben, Annette Messager and Keith Haring caused quite a stir on the catwalk but the Yvon Lambert Gallery firmly supported this revolutionary approach of breaking boundaries between contemporary living art and life. Jean-Charles was asked by the Vatican to design an official cape to be worn by the Pope. The multicoloured cross displayed on the Pope’s ‘chasuble’ was worn by Pope John Paul on World Youth Day. Lady Gaga and Kanye West are among the fans of Jean-Charles’s designs. In 1999 his first concept store was opened in Paris and de Castelbajac the stylist, designer, illustrator and writer continues to create colourful art as an antidote against norms. In the mid-2000s, he is exposed at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Fashion Museum of Paris. Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac is also Commander of Arts and Letters. In 2014, he was appointed to the Crystal Globe for Best fashion designer.