Alex Katz, 11:30 AM (detail), 2008, oil on linen, 8' x 6' (243.8 cm x 182.9 cm) © Alex Katz Online Viewing Room A Swiftly Tilting Planet Mar 31 – Apr 14, 2020Curated by Adam Sheffer and Oliver Shultz A Swiftly Tilting Planet brings together a selection of works by seminal artists, expressing the potential energy of a teeming stillness and the promise of a future world.The works in the exhibition capture slowness, inwardness, and reflection as techniques of insuppressible vitality, anointing every ending as a new beginning and celebrating art’s enduring power—and its salutary presence—in our topsy-turvy lives.A Swiftly Tilting Planet features works by Lynda Benglis, Harry Callahan, William Eggleston, Eric Fischl, Peter Hujar, Alex Katz, Sol LeWitt, Maya Lin, Brice Marden, Elizabeth Murray, Lucas Samaras, Arlene Shechet, Kiki Smith, and Richard Tuttle. Read More Eric Fischl, Untitled, 2000, watercolor on paper, 59-3/4" x 40-1/4" (151.8 cm x 102.2 cm) Learn More “I arise, I face the sunrise,And do the things my fathers learned to do.Stars in the purple dusk above the rooftopsPale in a saffron mist and seem to die,And I myself on a swiftly tilting planetStand before a glass and tie my tie.”Conrad Aiken, from “Senlin: A Biography” (1918) Close modal Eric Fischl Untitled 2000 watercolor on paper 59-3/4" x 40-1/4" (151.8 cm x 102.2 cm) Eric Fischl (b. 1948, New York) rose to prominence in the 1980s for his figurative paintings depicting the undercurrents and realities of suburban life. The subject matter, ranging from intimate bedroom scenes to tableaux depicting beaches and backyards, simultaneously expresses what was experienced and what could not be said. Along with painting, Fischl has created sculptures, drawings, photographs, and prints, and has been widely exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout the world. Inquire How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back Even as everyday life frays at the seams, spring heralds its usual arrival. Crocuses bloom, the stars fade, and morning comes. Beauty persists as a beacon to guide our daily rituals even in times of tumult.Think of Senlin in Conrad Aiken’s 1918 poem, who gazes out his window at a world ravaged by a World War and a worsening pandemic, but who finds instead the beauty of the morning sun’s arrival as it turns the mist a saffron hue in the new light of day. Art and poetry anchor us to our daily rituals, Senlin reminds us, promising the eternal return of the morning after the long night. This possibility of renewal endures, despite the uncertainties that come to pass on the “swiftly tilting planet” that we occupy together. Read More Alex Katz, 11:30 AM, 2008, oil on linen, 8' x 6' (243.8 cm x 182.9 cm) Learn More “There are suns beneath my floor,” says Senlin in Aiken’s poem, and Alex Katz’s 11:30 AM (2008) is a riot of sunlight. In his exuberant rendition of a landscape, a field of golden grass at the edge of a cerulean lake becomes a “color field” of solar radiance, absorbing and reverberating sunlight while distending our looking into a kind of otherworldly time.Katz offers us an ode to painting’s powers of slowness with a pastoral vision gilded in mid-morning splendor. He tunes our gaze to the rhythms of nature—to the daily promise of the sun’s rising and falling, a process that remains oblivious to human affairs—and to a future awaiting us through the escape of imagination, suggested by the silhouette of a dock and a rowboat lying nearby in the grass. Close modal Alex Katz 11:30 AM 2008 oil on linen 8' x 6' (243.8 cm x 182.9 cm) Throughout his career, Alex Katz (b. 1927, Brooklyn, New York) has developed a unique approach to contemporary representational painting, characterized by his use of intensely saturated, unmodulated color and fluidity of line. In addition to portraiture, Katz has returned to landscape throughout his career. He begins by painting small studies en plein air and later uses them to develop large-scale landscapes that he characterizes as “environmental,” reflecting the way in which their scale and composition envelop the viewer. How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back William Eggleston, Untitled, 1974, color pigment print, image, 27 1/8 x 18 3/4 inches paper, 30 x 24 inches Learn More The sun’s radiance is equally alive in William Eggleston's timeless photographic portrait of a woman in a canary-yellow dress. She appears almost luminous in her causal encounter with the camera, both arrested by Eggleston’s lens and perpetually en route to some unknown destiny awaiting her just outside the frame. In Eggleston’s quintessential moment of frozen Americana, stillness becomes an active process of imagination and generativity, conjuring the promise of a future perpetually on the cusp of taking place. Close modal William Eggleston Untitled 1974 color pigment print image, 27 1/8 x 18 3/4 inches paper, 30 x 24 inches William Eggleston (b. 1939, Memphis) was among the earliest vanguard of photographers working in color. Since the 1960s, he has approached the visible world with an acute sense of the visual power inherent in everyday life and its details. The intense, saturated colors in Eggleston’s images result from his pioneering use of the defunct dye-transfer process. His works, both enigmatic and poetic, are canonical in the history of twentieth-century photography for their unique visual dynamism and their compelling expression of American life. Inquire How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back Elizabeth Murray, Double, 1995, pastel and charcoal on 4 pieces of paper, 24 x 34" (61 x 88.4 cm) framed, 27" × 37" Learn More The sense of a teeming or roiling stillness reverberates in two works on paper by seminal American artists Elizabeth Murray and Lucas Samaras, which confront the classical genre of the still life, exploding and refiguring it from the ground up. Murray’s bravura pastel rendition of two teacups—a signature motif from her visual lexicon—wobbles and bulges with characteristically seductive pulsation. Close modal Elizabeth Murray Double 1995 pastel and charcoal on 4 pieces of paper 24 x 34" (61 x 88.4 cm) framed, 27" × 37" Elizabeth Murray (b. 1940, Chicago; d. 2007, Washington County, New York) transformed modernist abstraction by redefining the sculptural dimensions of painting. She emerged amid a generation of artists in the late 1960s and early ‘70s who responded to the dominance of Minimalism and Pop through recourse to earlier movements, including Surrealism and Cubism. Her celebrated late paintings incorporate layered planes of stretched canvas and feature a uniquely audacious palette, rendering physical a sensuously abstracted language of everyday forms. Inquire How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back Lucas Samaras, Untitled, September 9, 1974, pastel on paper, 13 X 10" Learn More A master of the pastel medium, which he began using in the late 1950s, Samaras renders a floral bouquet like a mirage hovering in a chromatic explosion of psychedelically tessellated forms. No longer nature morte, Samaras and Murray give us nature vivant—stillness imbued with all the churning libidinous energies of life. Close modal Lucas Samaras Untitled September 9, 1974 pastel on paper 13 X 10" Lucas Samaras (b. 1936, Kastoria, Macedonia, Greece) is famous for an expansive and deeply inventive body of work pioneered over a six-decade career. Working across a dizzying array of mediums—including painting, sculpture, assemblage, photography, writing, and performance—he examines the body and the psyche, especially his own. In the 1960s, Samaras’s practice proposed a radical departure from prevailing ideas, and he has long been recognized as a vanguard figure in the history of art. Samaras’s celebrated pastels, made from 1958 onward, were featured in a recent retrospective at The Morgan Library in New York. Inquire How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back Lynda Benglis, Mobilian, 2013, glazed ceramic, 18" × 18" × 15" (45.7 cm × 45.7 cm × 38.1 cm) Learn More Two works in ceramic by Lynda Benglis and Arlene Shechet, both among the most influential figures in the history of post-1960s sculpture, celebrate the sensuous pleasures of materiality, surface, and texture. Benglis’s expressionistic glaze transforms the language of abstract painting into a three-dimensional choreography. Played out as a complex of folding spaces, drips and slashes of paint offer chromatic counterpoints to the undulating hand-worked surfaces of the underlying form. Close modal View Previous View Next Carousel slide 0 Carousel slide 1 Carousel slide 2 Lynda Benglis Mobilian 2013 glazed ceramic 18" × 18" × 15" (45.7 cm × 45.7 cm × 38.1 cm) Lynda Benglis (b. 1941, Lake Charles, Louisiana) is widely celebrated for her pioneering approach to sculpture, which conveys an enduring fascination with materiality and process. Since the 1960s, Benglis has created works that are simultaneously playful and visceral, continually pushing the language of sculpture into new territories through the innovative use of materials, from beeswax, latex, and glitter in her early works to plaster, gold, vaporized metals, glass, and ceramics in her works of later decades. Inquire How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back Arlene Shechet, Reverb, 2017, glazed ceramic, painted hardwood, 33-1/2" × 22" × 19" (85.1 cm × 55.9 cm × 48.3 cm), ceramic 47" × 12" × 12" (119.4 cm × 30.5 cm × 30.5 cm), wood 80-1/2" × 22" × 19" (204.5 cm × 55.9 cm × 48.3 cm), overall Learn More “...I don’t want to make something that’s just an idea. I want to make something that’s visceral.”Arlene ShechetShechet’s Reverb (2017) turns color into a palpable thing, a seductive and beguiling presence that feels like an organ plucked from deep within our own bodies, enlivened with totemic power but also levitated as if in a state of suspended animation. Close modal View Previous View Next Carousel slide 0 Carousel slide 1 Carousel slide 2 Carousel slide 3 Carousel slide 4 Carousel slide 5 Carousel slide 6 Arlene Shechet Reverb 2017 glazed ceramic, painted hardwood 33-1/2" × 22" × 19" (85.1 cm × 55.9 cm × 48.3 cm), ceramic 47" × 12" × 12" (119.4 cm × 30.5 cm × 30.5 cm), wood 80-1/2" × 22" × 19" (204.5 cm × 55.9 cm × 48.3 cm), overall Arlene Shechet (b. 1951, New York) is a multidisciplinary sculptor whose virtuosic approach to materiality produces works rich in idiosyncrasy, combining disparate mediums from ceramics to wood and metalwork in beguiling configurations that are at once playful, sensuous, and deeply bodily. Her major, critically acclaimed survey All At Once at The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston was called by New York Times “some of the most imaginative American sculpture of the past 20 years, and some of the most radically personal.” How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back Peter Hujar, Horse, West Virginia, 1969, pigmented ink print, 14-3/4" × 14-3/4" (37.5 cm × 37.5 cm), image 20" × 16" (50.8 cm × 40.6 cm), paper Learn More “There are horses neighing on far-off hillsTossing their long white manes,And mountains flash in the rose-white dusk,Their shoulders black with rains....”Conrad Aiken, from “Senlin: A Biography” (1918)The sense of bodily presence, anthropomorphism, and arrested motion is also at work in a tender portrait of a horse on a hillside by the great American photographer Peter Hujar. Hujar produced many touching portraits of animals over the course of his career, often drawing out a kind of subjective presence that suggests the artist’s empathy for the lives of other terrestrial beings. Here, he frames the horse—an animal capable of great speed—in a moment of otherworldly quietude and repose. Close modal Peter Hujar Horse, West Virginia 1969 pigmented ink print 14-3/4" × 14-3/4" (37.5 cm × 37.5 cm), image 20" × 16" (50.8 cm × 40.6 cm), paper Peter Hujar (b. 1934, Trenton, New Jersey; d. 1987, New York) photographed artists, performers, intellectuals, and iconic figures of the New York City subculture with penetrating sensitivity and psychological depth. He was at the forefront of the group of artists, musicians, writers, and performers in downtown New York in the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s. He succumbed to AIDS in 1987, leaving behind a complex and profound body of work that has become posthumously celebrated worldwide. How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back Maya Lin, Blue Wave, 2013, crystal, 1-1/2" x 14" x 14-1/2" (3.8 cm x 35.6 cm x 36.8 cm) Learn More Close modal View Previous View Next Carousel slide 0 Carousel slide 1 Carousel slide 2 Carousel slide 3 Maya Lin Blue Wave 2013 crystal 1-1/2" x 14" x 14-1/2" (3.8 cm x 35.6 cm x 36.8 cm) Maya Lin (b. 1959, Athens, Ohio) works across environmental installation, architecture, and sculpture. Her practice explores the development of systems, reflecting on our environment and creating work that invites the critical contemplation of history and the natural world. For Lin, experience and movement are integral to heightening spatial perception and environmental awareness. Her approach to artmaking often finds its origins in the forms and temporalities of the natural world, and in the scientific lenses that illuminate it, from satellite technology to cartographic techniques. How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back Maya Lin’s work often examines processes of geologic time and topological transformation that occur so slowly, they appear almost still. Her work approaches nature as an environmental system to which we all belong, while drawing on the language of Minimalism to evoke the visual essence of natural forms without depicting them directly. Blue Wave (2013) captures undulating waves in blue crystal, resembling the rippling surface and luminous reflection of a body of water as if frozen in time, while echoing the monumental forms of her site-specific earthworks. Read More Brice Marden, Untitled, 1973-1974, ink on paper, 13-3/4" × 16-3/4" (34.9 cm × 42.5 cm) Learn More Close modal View Previous View Next Carousel slide 0 Carousel slide 1 Carousel slide 2 Carousel slide 3 Brice Marden Untitled 1973-1974 ink on paper 13-3/4" × 16-3/4" (34.9 cm × 42.5 cm) Brice Marden (1938, Bronxville, New York) is among the central protagonists of post-1960s painting, best known for his hard-edged geometric abstractions. Emerging from the wake of both Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism, Marden’s work did not fit neatly within either school. Instead, he viewed his work as a conversation with the entire history of painting rather than only its recent developments. His paintings and works on paper seek a direct sensory appeal to the viewer, eliciting a deeply corporeal experience through careful distillations of color and paint. How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back Kiki Smith, Summer, 2008, ink, glitter, mica, and pencil on Nepalese paper, 20" × 30" (50.8 cm × 76.2 cm) Learn More Close modal Kiki Smith Summer 2008 ink, glitter, mica, and pencil on Nepalese paper 20" × 30" (50.8 cm × 76.2 cm) Kiki Smith (American, b. 1954, Nuremberg, Germany) is celebrated for her influential exploration of the poetics of the body, experiences of mortality and regeneration, and questions of gender politics across a multidisciplinary body of work. Often suggesting an interconnection between spirituality and the natural world, Smith’s work is frequently inspired by visual cultures of the past, spanning scientific anatomical renderings from the eighteenth century to the abject imagery of folklore, mythology, Byzantine iconography, and medieval altarpieces. How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back “My work has always been involved with nature, no matter how abstract. Sometimes it's more formal and less involved with the real world. But there's always been some sort of involvement with nature.”Brice MardenThrough the palpable physicality of mark-making, Marden’s untitled drawing suggests the forces of nature, transforming a rectangle—the most elemental building block of architecture but also the basic grammatical unit of minimalism— into a locus of energy, a kind of battery for frenetic vision.Kiki Smith, meanwhile, figures nature as an illuminating and animating presence—a mysterious wellspring of vitality, spirit, and thought. Her delicate drawing of a lightbulb suspended from a tree branch suggests the tree itself as a source of energetic luminosity. The distressed surface of the paper reminds us that paper itself is a material composed of trees—one of their many gifts to us. Read More Sol LeWitt, Horizontal Lines on Color, 2005, gouache on paper, 45" x 45" (114.3 cm x 114.3 cm) Learn More “As with the wall pieces, the gouaches have had their own organic development, I try to make them as part of the ritual of my life.”Sol LeWitt Close modal View Previous View Next Carousel slide 0 Carousel slide 1 Carousel slide 2 Carousel slide 3 Carousel slide 4 Carousel slide 5 Carousel slide 6 Sol LeWitt Horizontal Lines on Color 2005 gouache on paper 45" x 45" (114.3 cm x 114.3 cm) Sol LeWitt (b. 1928, Hartford, Connecticut; d. 2007, New York) was a leading figure of Minimalism and a pioneer of Conceptual art. He applied systematic parameters to his work, using mathematical formulae or limiting constraints to develop the object and remove himself from making subjective decisions about the finished product. His prolific output of wall drawings represented a breakthrough in his career and solidified his engagement with practices spanning painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, and printmaking. Developed in tandem with his wall drawings, LeWitt’s gouaches were instead always painted in the artist’s own hand. How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back Richard Tuttle, basis68, late 1970s, ink and tape on paper, 6" × 4" (15.2 cm × 10.2 cm) Learn More Richard Tuttle’s work also draws deeply on nature through a spare vocabulary of poetic geometries. His basis drawings of the 1970s, which celebrate the exquisite delicacy of line as an elemental form, reflect the artist’s early efforts in articulating an idiosyncratic language of Post-Minimal art, which has proved particularly influential for contemporary sculpture. The reductive lyricism of line recurs in the abstract horizontal waves of a late gouache by Conceptual-art pioneer Sol LeWitt—its serene stillness never ceasing to produce a restless sense of swimming opticality—but also in Harry Callahan’s exquisitely beautiful 1943 photograph of weeds emerging through snow. Close modal Richard Tuttle basis68 late 1970s ink and tape on paper 6" × 4" (15.2 cm × 10.2 cm) Richard Tuttle (b. 1941, Rahway, New Jersey) creates deceptively simple works of exquisite beauty and simmering poetic power. Reflecting a radical attention to—and care for—the most minute textures of lived experience and the natural world, Tuttle’s works are minimal while rejecting the rationality and precision of Minimalism. In the 1970s, Tuttle controversially embraced an art of the handmade, the tenuous, and the formless. He developed a uniquely diaphanous language of line, shape, color, and space that resists categorization. An artist’s artist, Tuttle’s works have had profound impact on contemporary practices. Inquire How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back Like the blades of grass emerging from the melting snow in Callahan’s photograph, Aiken’s Senlin reminds us that even in the midst of a long dark winter, there is still the promise of spring. Nature’s beauty remains inexhaustible despite the vicissitudes of the world. “I stand on a star unstable,” Senlin says, and yet art—like poetry— provides an anchor. It leads us back to ourselves and to each other, grounding us in the sensuous joys of simple rituals, the endless possibilities of stillness, and the unending mysteries of each new day. Read More Harry Callahan, Weeds in Snow, Detroit, 1943, gelatin silver print, 5-3/4" × 7-3/4" (14.6 cm × 19.7 cm), image 8" × 10" (20.3 cm × 25.4 cm), paper Learn More Close modal Harry Callahan Weeds in Snow, Detroit 1943 gelatin silver print 5-3/4" × 7-3/4" (14.6 cm × 19.7 cm), image 8" × 10" (20.3 cm × 25.4 cm), paper Harry Callahan (b. 1912, Detroit; d. 1999, Atlanta) helped to introduce a vocabulary of formal abstraction into American photography at a time when descriptive realism was the dominant aesthetic. He often returned to the same subjects throughout his prolific six-decade career: his wife Eleanor and daughter Barbara, the urban environment, and nature, continually developing new methods and formats to embrace and depict his world. Inquire How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back It is morning, I awake from a bed of silence,Shining I rise from the starless waters of sleep.The walls are about me still as in the evening,I am the same, and the same name still I keep.The earth revolves with me, yet makes no motion,The stars pale silently in a coral sky.In a whistling void I stand before my mirror,Unconcerned, and tie my tie.Conrad Aiken, from “Senlin: A Biography” (1918)Conrad Aiken’s poem “Senlin: A Biography” first appeared in The Charnel Rose, Senlin: Biography, and Other Poems, published by Four Seas Press in Boston, 1918. (opens in a new window) Click here to read Aiken’s poem in full. Read More To inquire about any of the works featured in this exhibition, please email inquiries@pacegallery.com. Read More Past, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Mar 31, 2020