Preview: Joel Shapiro

London—Pace London is pleased to announce its first exhibition of works by Joel Shapiro, on view from
19 May to 17 June 2017. Presented throughout Pace’s main gallery and an adjacent space at 6
Burlington Gardens, the exhibition will feature an installation of seven vibrant, volumetric sculptures and a
selection of recent works on paper.

These seven sculptures, many of which were first exhibited at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, in
May 2016, continue Shapiro’s longstanding investigation of anthropomorphic and architectonic form while
challenging the viewer’s sense of balance and scale. Re-configured specifically for Pace London – some
placed directly on the floor, others tethered by cordage from the walls and ceiling – many of these recent
works appear weightless in space, their forms seemingly relieved of mass and gravity, a sense further
emphasized by their hollow construction with 3mm plywood. The juxtaposition of suspended and
freestanding volumes in a single work, as well as the introduction of more suggestive, referential forms,
represents a new direction in Shapiro’s experimentation with dissociated systems that commenced
around 2002, when he began to disassemble more coherent structures into a series of wood and wire
works that he hung from the walls and ceiling of his studio. These earlier discrete works, which were
featured in an exhibition at Pace Gallery, New York, in 2005, subsequently evolved into room-sized
installations of suspended, rectilinear elements that he exhibited at Pace Gallery, New York (2010),
Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2011), and Rice University Art Gallery, Houston (2012), among other
institutions.