Château La Coste and Gagosian present a major exhibition by Australian designer Marc Newson, opening 15 March 2026 in the Oscar Niemeyer Auditorium. Spanning four decades, the show brings together fourteen works installed across the pavilion and surrounding landscape — a focused survey of one of contemporary design’s most recognisable figures.
Inside Niemeyer’s luminous curves, Newson’s legendary Lockheed Lounge enters into dialogue with the architecture. Outside, Electra — a six-metre-high sculpture conceived over three decades ago — makes its public debut, anchoring the entrance drive with a bold, reflective presence.
Newson’s practice moves fluidly between craft and engineering, tradition and advanced fabrication. From his early silversmithing experiments as a student to large-scale works realised through complex international collaborations, material remains central. Cloisonné enamel, an ancient technique rarely attempted at monumental scale, appears across chairs and chaise longues patterned in dense floral and spotted motifs, produced through a dedicated workshop established in China. Elsewhere, marble and Azul Macaubas stone are carved from single blocks into forms that seem improbably supple, their weight visually dissolved.
Even the surfboard, one of Newson’s recurring motifs, is reimagined through high-performance engineering, merging artisanal lineage with technical precision.
“Exhibitions often afford the opportunity to reflect,” Newson notes. “To collate, connect and mediate.” Set within the Provençal landscape, the presentation underscores his longstanding preoccupations with craft, experimentation and scale. Absence is as important as presence: negative space shapes perception, pushing materials beyond expectation and redefining what design can be.
Bringing together loans from Gallery Kreo and private collections alongside Gagosian works, the exhibition situates Newson’s objects as both sculptural propositions and functional icons — pieces that have shaped the visual language of contemporary design while remaining rooted in process.
At Château La Coste, Newson’s forms unfold between architecture and open air, past and future — a reminder that design, in his hands, operates without borders.
Marc Newson, 15th March – 21st June 2026, Oscar Niemeyer Auditorium, Château La Coste
About the artist
Born in Sydney in 1963, Newson graduated from Sydney College of the Arts in 1986. Receiving a grant from the Australian Crafts Council, he staged his first solo exhibition, Seating for Six, at Roslyn Oxley9 in Sydney, when he was just twenty-three. By the age of twenty-five, he had produced the hand-built Lockheed Lounge, a chaise lounge named after its riveted aluminium panels’ resemblance to the aircraft engineered by Lockheed Martin.
After living and working in Sydney, Tokyo, and Paris, he relocated to London, where his company, Marc Newson Limited, has been based since 1997. Newson has also concomitantly held senior positions at clients’ companies: he was creative director of Qantas Airways from 2005 to 2015, and he has been a designer for special projects at Apple since 2014. In 2019, Marc and Sir Jonathan Ive founded the creative collective LoveFrom.
