Pace Gallery reveals Lucas Samaras’s boxes and fabric reconstructions

Lucas Samaras has long occupied a singular position in contemporary art, his practice rooted in an almost obsessive exploration of domestic objects transformed into vessels of psychological intensity. Pace Gallery’s forthcoming exhibition at 540 West 25th Street brings together two of his most significant bodies of work: the iconic box sculptures that defined his reputation across three decades, and a revelatory series of fabric paintings that have remained largely unseen since their creation in 1979.

The box sculptures, spanning from the 1960s through the 1980s, represent Samaras at his most enigmatic. Constructed from wood, mirrors, glass and found materials, these works function simultaneously as architectural interventions and psychological landscapes. Their surfaces gleam with an unsettling beauty, reflective and concealing at once, inviting the viewer into spaces that seem to hold secrets. Each box becomes a portal, its interior depths suggesting narratives that remain deliberately opaque.

The Reconstructions series, by contrast, channels Samaras’s inventive energy into a medium rarely associated with his name. These fabric paintings, created during a remarkably prolific moment in 1979, demonstrate an entirely different vocabulary of mark making and colour. Working directly on textile, Samaras layered paint, thread and pigment into compositions of remarkable complexity, each surface telling its own story through accumulation and gesture.

What binds these two bodies of work is Samaras’s fundamental obsession with transformation and enclosure, with the ways objects might contain or reveal consciousness itself. The exhibition honours both the monumental presence of the boxes and the intimate, almost whispered quality of the fabric works.

Boxes and Reconstructions runs from November 6, 2026, through January 23, 2027, at Pace Gallery’s Chelsea location.

Imagery courtesy of Pace Gallery (@pacegallery).