Wang Guangle

Delayed Gravity

On View
Jan 16 – Feb 28, 2026
New York

Pace is pleased to announce an exhibition of ten new paintings by Wang Guangle at its 540 West 25th Street gallery in New York. On view from January 16 to February 28, 2026, this will be the artist’s first solo exhibition in New York since 2019, when he presented Wang Guangle: Duo Color at Pace.

A pioneer of conceptual and abstract painting in China, Wang is known for his process-based works that he builds up layer-by-layer over the course of days and months. He sees the act of painting as a spiritual practice; creating mesmeric color gradations and textures in systematic layers of acrylic paint, he uses repetition as a means of expressing persistence and transcendence through time.

Wang has long been interested in the tension between form and meaning, a relationship that informs his unique syntax of abstraction. Much of his work originates from deeply personal and existential ideas about temporality, physicality, and mortality—though he trained in academic oil painting, the artist is guided by an intention to center these abstract subjects in viewers’ embodied experiences of his paintings. In recent years, Wang has mounted solo exhibitions at Pace’s Seoul and London galleries, Cai Jin Space in Beijing, and Fosun Foundation in Shanghai, among other institutions.

Delayed Gravity, the title of his upcoming show in New York, speaks to the durational processes and devotional labors that define his practice. It will bring together ten new compositions, almost all of which are large in scale. These works are part of his new series Untitled 2, a continuation of the Untitled series, which he began in 2007. While the compositions in the Untitled works were built up in layers towards the center of the canvas, laid flat on the floor, his Untitled 2 paintings are produced with the canvas propped up vertically, responding to the limits and possibilities of the conditions of his new studio. With this body of work—which can be understood in relation and opposition to enactments of fading—the artist layers disparate colors from the top of the composition down, producing illusionistic effects in depth and perspective. This process further exaggerates the downward fade of his horizontal bands of pigment and exposes the canvas’s edge. His finished compositions give the impression of simultaneously receding into and protruding from the walls on which theyhang.

Rife with visual contradictions, Wang’s new works take on a distinctly sculptural quality. These engrossing, almost hypnotic paintings draw viewers into their monumental surfaces and seemingly illimitable depths. In this way, the artist invites us into his ineffable, contemplative, and liminal world of color and space.

In addition to the paintings in the exhibition, Wang will also present a new sculptural installation, titled One Layer a Day, on the gallery’s second-floor outdoor terrace. With this participatory work, colorful pigments will be added to a body of water contained in a silicone mold. Overnight, after a new color is added, the water will freeze, producing a vibrant slab of ice. The artist will stack each of the slabs throughout the run of the show, creating an installation that reflects his enduring interest in ephemeral, performative, architectural, and community-minded works of art.

Films

Wang Guangle on Painting the Mystery of Time

Known for works that render time visible through infinitesimal gestures over the course of days and months, Wang Guangle uses repetition as a means towards transcendence. Here, he speaks about the evolution of his practice, from the early 2000s to the present, and how he explores temporality, physicality, and mortality through painting as well as unconventional materials.

Portrait of Wang Guangle by Siqi Qin — Photo by Siqi Qin, courtesy of Wang Guangle

About the Artist

Wang Guangle, a pioneer of abstract and conceptual painting among his generation, studied at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, where he began exploring the potential of the painting surface as integral to his work. In 2003, he co-founded N12, a collective of twelve fellow graduates who began showing together as a means of securing exhibition space at a time when emerging Chinese art had yet to assert its place in the art market or critical discourse. The group came to represent a generation of diverse artists who developed their work two decades after the Cultural Revolution, unified by a break from formal representation toward individual expression. Wang quickly garnered critical praise for his process-based paintings, wherein the artist translates abstract qualities of the world—such as the passage of time—into paint, simultaneously referring to the materiality of the medium and the act of painting through abstraction and repetition.

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EXHIBITION DETAILS

Wang Guangle
Delayed Gravity
Jan 16 – Feb 28, 2026

GALLERY

540 West 25th Street
New York

PRESS

Press Release

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Wang Guangle

Delayed Gravity

Films

Wang Guangle on Painting the Mystery of Time

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About the Artist

EXHIBITION DETAILS

GALLERY

PRESS

CONNECT

Journal

Wang Guangle on Painting the Mystery of Time

Temporality and Ritual in Wang Guangle's Paintings

Contemporary Asian Artists at Virginia's Hermitage