Torkwase Dyson and Mark Rothko inaugurate Pace gallery’s new London home
Just in time for Frieze Week 2021, Pace has opened its much-anticipated Hanover Square gallery with shows by Torkwase Dyson and Mark Rothko
Pace Gallery has unveiled its new London home at 5 Hanover Square with inaugural shows by New York-based artist Torkwase Dyson and late abstract expressionist legend Mark Rothko.
Dyson’s Liquid a Place will serve as a dynamic inaugural offering for the gallery. On view from 8 October – 6 November, coinciding with Frieze Week 2021, the multi-media installation transforms one of the new gallery spaces with sculptures, activated by a site-specific sound piece.
The artist, self-described as a painter across different media, grapples with how space is perceived and negotiated, particularly by Black and Brown bodies. On 7, 9 and 11 October as part of Pace Live, Dyson’s installation becomes a stage for leading writers, poets, dancers and musicians, selected by the artist, to engage with issues of environmental racism, spatial liberation and sensoria.
‘Working in London offers me the opportunity to lengthen my questions around human geography. This history/timeline of carving the earth, the construction of the canals and all the mechanistic infrastructure and architecture connected to it. And the River Thames’ history of docks and dispossession,’ says Dyson. ‘What is systemic world building? How do we separate planetary world building and issues of climate change and relationship/difference to the Western construction of the universal that flattens and disappears people? When I continue my research in the space it simply also opens up space to hold liberation strategies and recognise autonomy/self-possession.’
Elsewhere in the gallery, Mark Rothko’s ‘1968: Clearing Away’, offers a show of rarely seen paintings on paper created during the final years of the artist’s life. These works, developed during a time of ill-health and personal troubles for Rothko, mark a shift in scale from his characteristically monumental canvases to smaller works on paper. Though intimate in scale, these works are no less intense, meditative or intoxicating.
The gallery, previously home to Blain Southern, which closed in 2020, has been reimagined by Jamie Fobert Architects, the practice involved with Pace’s original London gallery on Lexington Street.
Fobert has transformed the interior architecture of the existing building, creating versatile galleries across two floors. The levels will be connected by a new feature staircase rendered in black steel. ‘At the beginning of the project, Pace considered carefully the way gallery spaces should relate to workspaces within the new gallery. This became the generating idea of our work,’ says Fobert. ‘The positioning of volumes and connections, both horizontal and vertical, has created a sense of fluid movement through the building. Art spaces and workspaces are integrated, giving the visitor a continuous dynamic experience.’ *
Wallpaper* Newsletter
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox.
INFORMATION
Torkwase Dyson: ‘Liquid a Place’. Exhibition: 8 October – 6 November 2021 Performances: October 7, 9, 11, 2021
‘Mark Rothko 1968: Clearing Away’, 8 October – 13 November 2021
ADDRESS
Pace Gallery
5 Hanover Square
London W1S 1HE
Harriet Lloyd-Smith was the Arts Editor of Wallpaper*, responsible for the art pages across digital and print, including profiles, exhibition reviews, and contemporary art collaborations. She started at Wallpaper* in 2017 and has written for leading contemporary art publications, auction houses and arts charities, and lectured on review writing and art journalism. When she’s not writing about art, she’s making her own.
-
Singapore bar and lounge Baia revives the opulence of Ancient Rome
Daven Wu samples Baia’s bacchanalian cocktails and louche slouching spots that are drawing the crowds in Singapore
By Daven Wu Published
-
AI in architecture: Zaha Hadid Architects on its pioneering use and collaborating with NVIDIA
We talk to ZHA about AI in architecture, its computational design advances, and its collaboration with NVIDIA on design, data and the future of AI and creativity
By Jonathan Bell Published
-
Sculptor James Cherry’s always playful and sometimes strange lamps set New York's Tiwa Gallery aglow
‘It was simultaneously extremely isolating and so refreshing’: Los Angeles-based sculptor James Cherry on brainstorming ‘From Pollen’ at New York’s Tiwa Gallery
By Diana Budds Published
-
Looking forward to Tate Modern’s 25th anniversary party
From 9-12 May 2025, Tate Modern, one of London’s most adored art museums, will celebrate its 25th anniversary with a lively weekend of festivities
By Smilian Cibic Published
-
Out of office: what the Wallpaper* editors have been doing this week
A week in the world of Wallpaper*. Here's how our editors have been entertaining themselves in the run up to Christmas
By Hannah Tindle Published
-
Love, melancholy and domesticity: Anna Calleja is a painter to watch
Anna Calleja explores everyday themes in her exhibition, ‘One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night’, at Sim Smith, London
By Emily Steer Published
-
Ndayé Kouagou speaks the language of the chaotic social media influencer in London
Ndayé Kouagou celebrates meandering incoherence with an exhibition, ‘A Message for Everybody’, at Gathering in London
By Phin Jennings Published
-
Out of office: what the Wallpaper* editors have been doing this week
A snowy Swiss Alpine sleepover, a design book fest in Milan, and a night with Steve Coogan in London – our editors' out-of-hours adventures this week
By Bill Prince Published
-
Discover psychedelic landscapes and mind-bending art at London’s Tate Modern
'Electric Dreams' at the Tate encompasses the period from the 1950s to the beginning of the internet era
By Hannah Silver Published
-
From activism and capitalism to club culture and subculture, a new exhibition offers a snapshot of 1980s Britain
The turbulence of a colourful decade, as seen through the lens of a diverse community of photographers, collectives and publications, is on show at Tate Britain until May 2025
By Anne Soward Published
-
Meet Kenia Almaraz Murillo, the artist rethinking weaving
Kenia Almaraz Murillo draws on the new and the traditional in her exhibition 'Andean Cosmovision' at London's Waddington Custot
By Hannah Silver Published