Tag Archives: pace gallery

Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday: Getting Close to Close by Elmgreen & Dragset

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elmgreen and dragset close sculpture 2 by gail worley
Photos By Gail

While wandering through the Chelsea Gallery district recently, I stopped by Pace Gallery on West 25th Street and headed up to the outdoor terrace. There, overlooking the eastern skyline with the Hudson River just beyond, I encountered a remarkable  sculpture of two young men standing together in a close embrace, while  each man wears a  virtual reality headst. Call this a  different kind of public art!

Entitled Close, this 2025 sculpture is by the Scandinavian artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset, and it is carved entirely from white marble. At more than five feet tall, the figures are life-size enough to feel like actual people sharing an intimate moment, which makes the VR headsets all the more intriguing.

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Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: Paul Thek, Hand With Ring

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paul thek hand with ring photo by gail worley
Photos By Gail

I’m a longtime fan of Paul Thek, particularly his famous wax meat sculptures, which remain some of the most unsettling and fascinating artworks of the 1960s. While exploring his work recently, I was captivated by a very different piece: Untitled (Hand with Ring) (1967), a colorful sculpture of a human hand encased inside a clear Plexiglas vitrine.

The work is part of Thek’s renowned Technological Reliquaries series, a body of work that helped establish him as one of the most original artists of his generation. At first glance, the hand appears almost archaeological, as though it has been unearthed from another time. Its surface is covered in layers of pink, blue, green, yellow, and silver, creating the appearance of peeling paint, weathered skin, or a treasured object transformed by age. A simple green ring adorns one finger, adding an unexpected touch of personality and mystery.
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Design and Innovation

Dollar Sign Bike Rack By David Byrne, Wall Street

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Bike Rack By David Byrne
Photos By Gail

Any weekday that I walk south on Wall Street towards Water Street to catch a bus home, I pass by this otherwise unremarkable Dollar Sign-Shaped Bike Rack, which not everyone knows was designed by Talking Heads front man, Fine Artist and Avid Bicyclist David Byrne. Until some time last year (I didn’t pay attention to exactly when this changed) there was an inverted paper coffee up — which no one would stop long enough to remove — covering the upward end of the ‘S’ shape.
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Arts and Culture

New Plate Paintings By Julian Schnabel at Pace Gallery

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Rose Painting Near Van Goghs Grave
Rose Painting Near Van Gogh’s Grave By Julian Schnabel (All Photos By Gail)

Confession: Julian Schnabel is not an artist whose work I particularly admire. To me, his stuff almost always seems uninspired, phoned in, and, well, just plain ugly.  I do not think that I’m alone in that opinion. Schnabel’s latest exhibit,  New Plate Paintings, which is his first solo show at Pace Gallery since leaving Gagosian, is a collection of nearly-identical variations on a  theme: paintings depicting pink roses on a bed of greenery, which is notable for being painted on a relief of broken dishes mounted on the canvas.

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Arts and Culture

David Hockney’s The Yosemite Suite at Pace Gallery

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Yosemite Suite
All Photos By Gail

When I was a small child, growing up in southern California, my parents used to take the family on camping vacations to Yosemite National Park. I probably went there four or five times up to the age of 8 or so. While these vacations are many decades in the past for me now, my very vivid memories of the park and its many tall and fragrant redwood trees, crystal clear shallow streams, majestic mountains, tumbling waterfalls, and other uniquely beautiful natural sights and smells stay with me to this day. Yosemite is breathtaking. Continue reading David Hockney’s The Yosemite Suite at Pace Gallery →