Paul Thek Exhibition at Pace Gallery Explores “Artist’s Artist” Legacy

A significant exhibition titled “Dream of Vanishing” at Pace Gallery in New York is providing a rare and in-depth look at the oeuvre of Paul Thek, an artist often described as an “artist’s artist.” The show, which runs through August 14, 2026, features approximately 50 artworks spanning from 1962 to the mid-1980s, offering a comprehensive exploration of his singular artistic journey.

Thek, who enjoyed a period of acclaim in New York’s downtown art scene during the Warhol era, famously departed for Italy in the late 1960s. His career was marked by a turbulent exhibition history and a period of neglect in the US, where he worked as a grocery store bagger before his passing in 1988 due to AIDS-related complications. This exhibition aims to shed light on his profound and often challenging body of work.

Exploring Themes of Life and Mortality

The exhibition highlights Thek’s distinctive approach, which ranged from lush ink drawings to disarming sculptures crafted from wax and bodily materials like human hair. These fleshy, immediate creations often coincided with periods of intense personal reflection, such as a transformative visit to Sicily’s Capuchin Catacombs with his partner, photographer Peter Hujar. This experience profoundly reshaped his ideas around life, transcendence, and the concept of memento mori.

Noah Khoshbin, director of the Paul Thek Foundation and curator of the exhibition alongside Pace Gallery’s chief curator Oliver Shultz and gallery founder Arnie Glimcher, emphasizes the painterly quality inherent in even Thek’s most lifelike three-dimensional works. “The decay he captured in meat had a direct connection to the 17th-century Dutch paintings,” Khoshbin notes, highlighting Thek’s playful curiosity in encapsulating mortality across multiple dimensions.

A Non-Linear Approach to Presentation

To honor the creative richness of an artist who reportedly felt vulnerable to interpretation, the curators opted for a “constellation approach” rather than a strict chronological timeline. This method allows for a non-linear path through Thek’s diverse output, reflecting the complexity of his artistic vision. Early paintings, characterized by earthy hues and spectral finishes, are presented alongside later works such as “Untitled (Feather Cross)” from 1969, which uses effervescent white feathers on a steel cross to explore faith and its evanescence.

The exhibition delves into Thek’s constant negotiation between the tangible and the ethereal, with mortality serving as a central anchor. The show’s title, “Dream of Vanishing,” encapsulates this tension—a march between an intense embrace of life and the ever-present awareness of its loss. The works are installed in intimate vignettes under moody lighting, culminating in his late-career, vibrant acrylic paintings from the mid-1980s. These small-scale abstractions, often displayed with child-sized chairs, were a reaction to the art industry’s disinterest and the pervasive stigma surrounding the AIDS pandemic.

Key Works and Artistic Significance

Among the most compelling pieces are a quintet of scrolls, believed to be from 1973 and part of the late Robert Wilson’s collection. These scrolls, some stretching up to 117 inches, are marked by erratic and subliminal gestures, offering a glimpse into a mind that resisted conformity. Glimcher describes these ink drawings as “the Rosetta Stone of his paintings,” created at a time when many peers were embracing Pop Art and de-emphasizing the hand in art-making.

In an era increasingly shaped by artificial intervention in creativity, Thek’s uncompromisingly raw and emotional approach resonates powerfully. The exhibition invites viewers to engage with an artist whose work consistently challenged conventions and explored the human condition with profound honesty.

Key facts

The exhibition is particularly relevant for architecture and design audiences as it showcases an artist whose material experimentation and conceptual depth offer insights into broader creative processes and the intersection of art, life, and transcendence. Thek’s unique engagement with form and substance, and his exploration of themes that resonate with the human experience, provide a rich context for understanding contemporary artistic practice.

Source: A rare insight into Paul Thek – the ‘artist’s artist’ – at Pace Gallery, New York – Wallpaper (https://www.wallpaper.com/art/exhibitions-shows/paul-thek-dream-of-vanishing-pace-gallery-new-york-review)