what pane of glass make lucid the reflection? by Li Hei Di

Art Basel Miami Beach

On View
Dec 6 – Dec 8, 2024
Miami Beach

ART FAIR DETAILS

Art Basel Miami Beach
Miami Beach Convention Center
Booth F9
Dec 6 – 8, 2024

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Above: Li Hei Di, what pane of glass make lucid the reflection?, 2024 © Li Hei Di

Pace Gallery is pleased to announce booth highlights for Art Basel Miami Beach 2024.

The gallery’s booth will spotlight contemporary artists from its program as well as several marquee 20th-century masterworks. This presentation will include artists new to Pace’s program: Alejandro Piñeiro Bello and Li Hei Di. It will feature contemporary artists Loie Hollowell, Alicja Kwade, Kylie Manning, Adam Pendleton, Hank Willis Thomas, and Leo Villareal, among others. Pace will also bring works by master figures of the past century: Emily Kam Kngwarray, Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin, Joan Mitchell, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, and Wayne Thiebaud.

Contemporary highlights on Pace’s booth at Art Basel Miami Beach include:

A new Black Dada painting by Adam Pendleton, who will present a major solo exhibition at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. next year, anchoring the institution’s 50th anniversary celebration

The Guardian (2023), Elmgreen & Dragset’s 9.5-foot-tall gilded bronze work depicting a figure seated atop a high perch—concurrent with the fair, the artistic duo is presenting a solo exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, on view through February 2, 2025

A group of 12 new, small-scale nipple paintings by Loie Hollowell, who is presenting a solo exhibition at Pace’s Los Angeles gallery through January 18, 2025 and Space Between, A Survey of Ten Years at the ICA at Virginia Commonwealth University through March 9, 2025

Hold the earth above me (2024), a new painting by Kylie Manning, whose atmospheric backdrops and costumes will be presented at the New York City Ballet in January for the second year in a row—in March 2025, she will mount a solo show with Pace in New York.

A new work from Mika Tajima’s celebrated Art d'Ameublement series, a body of work that also figures in the artist’s ongoing solo presentation at Pace’s Hong Kong gallery

A new, never-before-seen, freestanding bronze sculpture by Alicja Kwade, Binding Finding (2024)

Miami-based artist Alejandro Piñeiro Bello’s painting 500 Years (2024), an undulating, magical landscape inspired by the history and spirit of the Caribbean

what pane of glass make lucid the reflection? (2024), a luminous large-scale composition by Li Hei Di that reflects the artist’s ability to embed latent narratives about gender, desire, and emotional fluidity in their abstractions and figurations

A new retroreflective artwork by Hank Willis Thomas, who is presenting a solo exhibition of his work at Pace in London and has curated a show of photographs by Irving Penn at the gallery’s New York space, both on view through December 21

A new sculpture by Leo Villareal, who is being honored at Ballroom Marfa’s 20th Anniversary Gala this year

Masters highlights on the gallery’s booth include:

Untitled #12 (1998), a late-career painting by Agnes Martin

Ellsworth Kelly’s Dark Blue Panel (1999), a striking eight-foot-tall canvas that epitomizes the artist’s radical experimentations with vivid monochromatic color, geometric forms, and flat, unmodulated surfaces

An untitled Joan Mitchell painting created circa 1958, during the decade that the Abstract Expressionist was developing and refining her lyrical style

Small cake (2017), a quintessential still life painted by Wayne Thiebaud in the last several years of his life

Two paintings from the 1990s by Emily Kam Kngwarray, who will be the subject of a major exhibition opening at London’s Tate Modern in July 2025

Study for Blueberry Pie à la Mode, Flying (1996), a sculpture by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen

Featured Works

Joan Mitchell

b. 1925, Chicago, Illinois
d. 1992, Paris, France

Joan Mitchell painted Untitled (ca. 1958) at a pivotal moment in her career, marked by increased creative exploration that led to her critical success. The frenetic strokes that characterized her earlier work gave way to the sweeping arcs and bold gestures that dominate her canvases from the late 1950s. Untitled features declarative, assertive strokes of olive green punctuated by rich jewel tones. These bands of color dart across the picture plane, concentrated in the upper and lower registers, set against Mitchell’s carefully crafted field of whites, which were critical in establishing figure and ground; she said in 1957 that painting without white was like “planting a garden without plants.” [1] The subtle layering of white over and around deeper colors reveals that rather than haphazardly spreading paint, the artist thoughtfully formed each brushstroke in response to the previous one and in anticipation of the next. Splitting her time between Paris and New York, Mitchell was increasingly influenced by French Impressionism while also exploring the lyrical potential of Abstract Expressionism. The independence and confidence that Mitchell gained in this period, as reflected in the bold gestures of Untitled, propelled her into a period marked by increased spontaneity and a dynamic engagement with the French countryside.

1. Joan Mitchell quoted in Judith E. Bernstock, Joan Mitchell (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1988), 39.

Ellsworth Kelly

b. 1923, Newburgh, New York
d. 2015, Spencertown, New York

Dark Blue Panel (1999), a rich expanse of unadulterated azure, exemplifies Ellsworth Kelly’s radical exploration of geometric hard-edge abstraction and his longstanding desire to produce vivid hues that were distinctly his own. Over his eight-decade career, Kelly engaged with the fundamentals of perception— pure form, color, and line—to redefine the bounds of painting. Central to his practice was an assertion of the inherent flatness of painting, a key tenet of modernism. In Dark Blue Panel, he achieves this effect by smoothly applying the medium in a way that belies the thick, viscous texture of the oil paint. Often inspired by shapes found in everyday life, the artist stretched and curved his canvases until his works took on sculptural qualities, vacillating between two and three dimensions. Dark Blue Panel is a distorted rectangle, challenging perceptions of the traditional portrait canvas. Through this rejection of illusionism and absence of painterly gesture, Kelly highlights the monochromatic surface, establishing an unmistakable relationship between the painting as figure and wall as ground. The title of the painting releases the work from any metaphor, demonstrating Kelly’s clear and forthright approach to artmaking.

Li Hei Di

b. 1997, Shenyang, China

Li Hei Di’s dreamlike painting what pane of glass make lucid the reflection? (2024) takes its title from a passage in Christina Sharpe’s book Ordinary Notes (2023). Through an interplay of abstract forms interspersed with moments of visual clarity, the present work marks a shift towards figuration in the artist’s recent practice. The composition teems with elusive, barely perceptible objects and figures: a skull, vestiges of limbs, a winged figure, stars, flowers, and a magenta-hued house, all surfacing from beneath diaphanous layers of color. The profile of the winged figure displays the curve of a jaw, nose, and eyes; the artist rarely depicts faces, distinguishing this work within their oeuvre. Drawing inspiration, in part, from Spanish surrealist Remedios Varo, Li creates ethereal environments in which figures and objects interact. Li’s creative process began with the house, building on a personal desire to create safe spaces, before gradually evolving into a denser composition. Objects, bodies, and shapes began to populate the top panel of the diptych as well as the top portion of the lower panel, flooding the space with all that has been liberated from the dwelling. The result is a dialogue between the human subconscious, desire, and the memories and objects attached to the idea of home.

500 Years by Alejandro Piñeiro Bello — Alejandro Piñeiro Bello, *500 Years*, 2024, oil on linen, 72" × 60" (182.9 cm × 152.4 cm)

Alejandro Piñeiro Bello

b. 1990, Havana, Cuba

Alejandro Piñeiro Bello’s new technicolor seascape 500 Years (2024) is a surreal imagination of the Caribbean islands a half millennium ago, before the first European colonists arrived. Piñeiro Bello shares a speculative glimpse of this environment as it was inhabited by the Taíno people, offering a semi-phantasmagoric vision of the islands as they might have appeared at the cusp of colonial contact. The painting dares viewers to believe in this vision, yet each brushstroke hints at a flickering uncertainty— the place exists not as fact, but somewhere between shared memory and lost history. Each iridescent hue, plant, shape, and human form recalls ancient cave paintings, where life was first rendered and understood, evoking a primal connection to the past. Tiny human figures dot this vast dreamscape, where swirling winds and hurricanes are illuminated by a glowing red sun, while wave-like arabesques of color, light, and abstractions lie beneath the heavy haze of the afternoon. For Piñeiro Bello, painting is a continuous conversation with the past: he engages with the voices from the Cuban poet Virgilio Piñera, whose 1940s work La Isla en Peso (“The Whole Island”) captivated him, to modernist Cuban painter Amelia Peláez, whose use of vibrant color and geometric abstraction deeply influenced his exploration of Caribbean identity and history. [1] In 500 Years, this dialogue unfolds across five centuries, translating a history of loss, survival, and cultural resilience into forms and colors that oscillate between the real and the symbolic.

1. Victoria Woodcock, “ (opens in a new window) Artist to Watch: Alejandro Piñeiro Bello Taps into Dreamscapes and Magical Realms,” Galerie Magazine, 5 November 2024.

Oldenburg/van Bruggen

Claes Oldenburg
b. 1929, Stockholm, Sweden
d. 2022, New York

Coosje van Bruggen
b. 1942, Groningen, Netherlands
d. 2009, Los Angeles

Loie Hollowell

b. 1983, raised in Woodland, CA
Lives in New York

The dimensional, chromatic paintings that comprise Loie Hollowell’s Spectrum installation are a unified body of individual works that refine her ongoing exploration of bodily forms in space. These paintings invoke Ellsworth Kelly’s monumental Spectrum V (1969) and span the full chromatic range—from yellow to green, blue, purple, red, orange, and back to yellow—while their individual parts balance smooth transitions with stark contrasts. A “milking line”— symbolizing the pull of gravity on milk as it drips from the nipple, either before or after feeding—drops straight down from each raised nipple, sharply delineating a bright highlight on the left and a dark shadow on the right.

Spectrum installation by Loie Hollowell — Loie Hollowell, Spectrum installation. Works sold individually

A fold, a crease, a pleat, a peak: the nipple designates a dividing line and a kind of crucible of intense chroma, each of which was cast from the body of a breastfeeding friend. The plumb line conjures the glowing, revolving arm of a radar map while connoting the time-keeping function and cyclicality of a sundial. Another iteration of Spectrum is on view in Loie Hollowell: Overview Effect at Pace’s Los Angeles gallery through January 18, 2025. These works demonstrate both the artist’s technical prowess and conceptual innovation, resulting in trompe-l’oeil illusions that both hyperbolize and complicate real dimensionality.

Leo Villareal

b. 1967, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Lives in New York

A contemporary heir to the Light and Space movement of the 1970s, Leo Villareal’s Golden Game (2024) sparks curiosity and wonder through its transformative use of LED lights and meticulously crafted algorithms. Golden Game, the title a reference to a book on 17th century alchemical engravings, takes common components and transfigures them into something much more precious than the sum of their parts. Hypnotic in its scintillating beauty, Golden Game invites contemplation on the delicate balance between technology and nature. This work produces patterns that rhyme with those found in the organic world—the constantly moving lights reminiscent of morning sunlight on a lake, the minute sparkles of a crystal, or the pearlescent sheen of a bird’s feather. Invisible but essential, the algorithmic component of the work structures the shimmering fluctuations of light on Golden Game’s surface. Villareal’s bespoke algorithm allows controlled random playback, ensuring that the artwork is ever-changing and never repeats the same configuration twice. The balance between the algorithmic and the ephemeral inspires extended looking and careful observation of patterns both hidden and in plain sight. Through its layered and subtly shifting tonalites of warm browns and beiges, dusted with quickly moving sparks of golden light, this work takes on the qualities of a mirage. The viewer is both witness to and student of the unifying forces that structure our world of light and change. The technology of the artwork, rather than distancing us from nature, illuminates our continued proximity. The gently glowing LEDs become the measure by which we might understand the interconnected energies of the universe. Alchemical and mystical, Golden Game redefines the boundaries of technology in pursuit of the transcendent.

Tara Donovan

b. 1969, Flushing, New York

Mika Tajima

b. 1975, Los Angeles

Alicja Kwade

b. 1979, Katowice, Poland
Lives and works in Berlin, Germany

Alicja Kwade’s sculpture Binding Finding (2024) explores the duality suggested by its title: “binding” refers to the connections or constraints that hold things together, while “finding” implies discovery or revelation. This tension is reflected in the work’s materials and composition, featuring two perpendicular walls made from bronze-cast mortar. The mortar signifies humanity’s underlying connections, even as the absence of bricks—symbolic of structure—suggests a questioning of what holds these connections together. Her use of bronze ties Binding Finding to a long art historical tradition, where the metal was used to immortalize significant figures and moments. By casting everyday materials like mortar in bronze, Kwade challenges conventional notions of permanence and cultural significance, a gesture seen in previous works such as her Mono Monde series (2023–), in which she transformed mass-produced so-called “monobloc” chairs into bronze sculptures, blurring the boundaries between high and low art. The motif of bricks, and their absence, appears in Kwade’s earlier work The Glass House (2022), where transparent glass bricks dismantle the notion of solidity, emphasizing what’s visible and what remains unseen. In Binding Finding, the negative space where bricks would be prompt viewers to reconsider the space between objects and the connections that hold them together. Kwade has cited her interest in gestalt psychology, which suggests that meaning arises from the relationships between parts rather than the parts themselves. In Binding Finding, the absence of bricks and the presence of voids shift focus from individual elements to the connections between them, inviting viewers to consider the invisible forces that hold the structure together.

Adam Pendleton

b. 1984, Richmond, Virginia

Kylie Manning

b. 1983, Juneau, Alaska

Kylie Manning’s new painting Hold the earth above me (2024) takes its title from the refrain of Tom Waits’s song “Green Grass” (2004): “Lay your head where my heart used to be/ Hold the earth above me/ Lay down on the green grass/ Remember when you loved me.” [1] Waits’s narrator speaks from beyond the grave in a haunting plea to a loved one still living; the repeated line “hold the earth above me” is a poetic request for a peaceful burial—an acceptance of death and a return to nature. Hold the earth above me embodies the tension between the realms of the living and the dead, its layered composition evoking a sense of spectral presence and longing. Swathes of rich color are interspersed with fleeting gestures toward figuration. While many of Manning's most recent works—such as the monumental diaphanous scrims that formed the centerpiece of her solo exhibition Kylie Manning: Yellow Sea at Space K, Seoul (August–November 2024)—have evoked the fluidity and vastness of the ocean, the present painting embraces the solidity and permanence of the land, grounding her abstract forms in earthen tones and textures that suggest soil, roots, and sediment. Hold the earth above me marks a shift from Manning’s recent seascapes, anchoring her work in a terrestrial context, a groundedness the artist attributes in part to motherhood. Manning’s brushstrokes, often likened to the rolling waves and mutable horizon lines of the sea, here blend figures and ground as if they are part of the landscape itself—embodied memories woven into meadows and fields.

1. Tom Waits, “Green Grass.” Track 5 on Blood Money, Anti-, 2002.

Emily Kam Kngwarray

b. 1910, Alhalkere, Utopia, Australia
d. 1996, Mparntwe/Alice Springs, Australia

Aboriginal artist Emily Kam Kngwarray frequently drew from
the wildlife and traditions of her native landscape in Australia’s Western Desert to construct her expressive visual language. Untitled (1992), composed of pink, ochre, and rust-red dots traversing the canvas, resembles the paint application in awely, an Aboriginal ceremonial practice that includes covering women’s bodies in dabs of oil and organic pigments. Patterns employed are specific to each woman and reinforce their relationship within their community and environment. Kngwarray approached her work as an extension of awely and other rituals, prioritizing the meaning inherent to her mark-making over precise form. The warm tones and patterns in Untitled suggest the coming of summer, celebrating the abundance of seeds and flowers of the Western Desert. She sat on the ground to create her canvases, often singing in time, creating her own ritual: the rhythmic application of paint wove together her artistic practice, her community, and their homeland.

To inquire about any of the artists or works featured here, please email us at inquiries@pacegallery.com.

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