Provence is at its most idyllic, all sun-warmed hills and soft blue skies – this is Cézanne country, after all. But Château La Coste isn’t the Provence the Impressionists would have known. Set among the vineyards just outside Aix-en-Provence, it’s a working winery, hotel and a contemporary art destination where works by Jenny Holzer, Ai Weiwei and Louise Bourgeois appear not in hushed galleries but along walking trails, beside ancient oak trees and between rows of cypress trees.
It’s an ambitious, ever-evolving place where, every year, proprietor and hotelier Paddy McKillen gives artists the freedom to create unchained. This summer, it’s Ralph Pucci’s turn. The celebrated New York gallerist and design house has taken over one of the estate’s gallery spaces with an exhibition that blurs the lines between art, furniture and installation.
Exhibiting amongst such esteemed neighbours – some friends, some idols – is not lost on a confident and warm Pucci: “This is obviously an incredible dream come true.” Ralph Pucci is the first American design exhibition held at the Château, and only the fourth overall: his excitement at this rare opportunity is understandable.
From June 23 through September 21, 2025, a legion of tables, chairs, and lamps created by 13 artists, designers and long-time collaborators of the Ralph Pucci studio will show in the Château’s Oscar Niemeyer pavilion. This otherworldly space would feel more at home on the orbit around another planet, its stark white and glass walls peeking out between the vineyards and pine trees, but it’s a perfect space for Pucci to show off “PURE Made in New York: A Celebration of a Sculpture Studio”.
Pucci’s connection to the Château began, fittingly, with a twist of serendipity. “I first came here for my 60th birthday and was totally blown away,” he recalls. A few years later, returning to support one of his designers, he found himself sharing a car from Marseille airport with none other than Paddy McKillen. By the time they reached the estate, a friendship – and future collaboration – had taken root. “We just hit it off. Same mindset, same energy. I’d joke every so often, ‘Paddy, we should do a show.’ One day, he said yes.”
It wasn’t just the company that captured Pucci’s imagination, it was the setting, too: with the Oscar Niemeyer pavilion, a sweeping, sculptural space feeling uncannily aligned with his own creative ethos. “Oscar Niemeyer was considered a sculptor of architecture, so his buildings weren’t, you know, just traditional,” Ralph explains. “They have all these shapes. And I felt it was important that our sculptural aesthetic meets his sculptural aesthetic. Even though they’re not exactly the same, we [both share] this freedom of sculpture.”
Like many of Pucci’s projects, there is the accompaniment of jazz as the exhibition’s soundtrack. It’s a nod to the studio’s creative spirit, as Ralph puts it, “We like to refer it to jazz… every day, it changes until we fight. That’s it. Let’s do that.” This improvisational energy comes alive in live sculpting sessions led by Pucci’s master sculptor, Michael Everett. Guests might not rival Pucci’s star collaborators, but they’ll still leave with a souvenir.
Presented across the pavilion’s clean, curving interior are more than a dozen pieces by longtime Pucci collaborators: Patrick Naggar, Eric Schmitt, John Koga, Paul Mathieu, Elizabeth Garouste, Lee F. Mindel, Stefan Bishop, Vladimir Kagan, Nina Seirafi, Olivier Gagnère, Alexandre Logé, Xavier Lust, Ilkka Suppanen and the in-house Ralph Pucci studio. Some are playful and architectural, others lean toward a more classically poetic form, but each piece has been cast as an exclusive white Plasterglass edition for the Château La Coste collection.
“I walked into this place — the grey floor, the white ceilings, the nature — and it just spoke to me,” he says, gesturing around the space as we walk through the exhibition ahead of its official opening. “It was a no-brainer for everything to be in white. I didn’t want anything to be distracting.”
For the younger Pucci, it’s a floor lamp by Patrick Naggar near the entrance that draws particular gravity: “It tells a story,” says Michael. “It has historical references – you might see a Twombly or Giacometti in it – but it’s also deeply functional,” he adds. When Tracey Emin first saw it, its gravitational pull was so strong she bought it on the spot. “That’s what we really want. To create an emotion, to create a culture around these pieces.”
For Ralph, it’s the towering sculptural mask that immediately commands attention as visitors enter. Part of Pucci’s’ ongoing Primal Mysteries series, “the mask represents the freedom to explore,” he says, “the freedom not to be thinking in the commercial sense.”
Ralph Pucci ‘PURE Made in New York: A Celebration of a Sculpture Studio’ at the Oscar Niemeyer Auditorium, Chateau La Coste, from June 23 through September 21, 2025.
Ralph Pucci ‘PURE Made in New York: A Celebration of a Sculpture Studio’ at the Oscar Niemeyer Auditorium, Chateau La Coste, from June 23 through September 21, 2025.
Ralph Pucci ‘PURE Made in New York: A Celebration of a Sculpture Studio’ at the Oscar Niemeyer Auditorium, Chateau La Coste, from June 23 through September 21, 2025.
Ralph Pucci ‘PURE Made in New York: A Celebration of a Sculpture Studio’ at the Oscar Niemeyer Auditorium, Chateau La Coste, from June 23 through September 21, 2025.
Casting everything in white Plasterglass also allows each sculptural detail to stand out and reveals the hand of the maker: the occasional fingerprint, the gentle imprint of a sculpting tool, the quiet irregularities that speak to its handmade nature. It’s also remarkably durable, intended not just for show, but for real life.
“In today’s world, where AI and technology are moving so fast, people are craving something made by hand,” says Michael Pucci, Ralph’s son and business partner. “These are made by our sculptors, our artisans, our collaborators. That uniqueness, that human touch, is what our clients are really looking for.” Each piece in the exhibition is available to buy, discreetly marked with a Château La Coste embossment at the base.
The exhibition also nods to the company’s roots: not just as a 70-year-old family business now led by Ralph’s children, Michael and Nicole, but to its beginnings as a Manhattan mannequin repair shop. Founded in 1954 by Ralph’s parents, Nick and Lee Pucci, the business evolved into a custom mannequin studio in the late ‘70s, shortly after Ralph joined. By the ‘90s, its expressive, fashion-forward forms were in demand by designers like Diane von Furstenberg and Anna Sui.
But as retail became more cost-driven, the creative energy faded. “Retail used to be very creative,” Ralph says. “But when people started saying, ‘We can get mannequins in China – they’re not as good, but they’re cheaper,’ that was the kiss of death.”
The pandemic was the final push. With retail on pause, Ralph turned inward: to his long-time sculptor, Michael Everett, his studio full of skilled artisans, and to a passion project that had long been on hold. “We’d dabbled in furniture before,” Ralph says, pointing to early collaborations with the late Vladimir Kagan. “We loved it. But we were too busy with mannequins to keep it going.” That changed in 2020. The studio pivoted fully to handcrafted furniture – still made in New York, still family-run, but now with sculpture at its core.
PURE at Château La Coste is a natural progression to mark seven decades of artistry, finally given space to breathe – not in a New York showroom, but under the same sun that once lit Cézanne’s canvas.
Ralph Pucci ‘PURE Made in New York: A Celebration of a Sculpture Studio’ at the Oscar Niemeyer Auditorium, Chateau La Coste, from June 23 through September 21, 2025. chateau-la-coste.com/ralph-pucci