Wang Guangle: Delayed Gravity
Wang Guangle: Delayed Gravity 540 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10001 January 16–February 28, 2026 Photography courtesy Pace Gallery
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. The exhibition opened on January 16 and will be on view until 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 Guangle, Untitled II – 251205, 2025 PAINTING acrylic on canvas 78-3/4" × 78-3/4" (200 cm × 200 cm) © Wang Guangle, courtesy Pace Gallery
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.
Wang Guangle: Delayed Gravity 540 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10001 January 16–February 28, 2026 Photography courtesy Pace Gallery
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 they hang.
Wang Guangle, Untitled 240706, 2024 PAINTING acrylic on canvas 27-9/16" × 19-11/16" (70 cm × 50 cm) © Wang Guangle, courtesy Pace Gallery
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.
Wang Guangle, Untitled II - 251126, 2025 PAINTING acrylic on canvas 44-7/8" × 57-1/2" (114 cm × 146cm) © Wang Guangle, courtesy Pace Gallery
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.
Wang Guangle: Delayed Gravity 540 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10001 January 16–February 28, 2026 Photography courtesy Pace Gallery
Wang Guangle (b. 1976, Songxi, Fujian Province, China), 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.
Wang’s work is held in numerous collections, including the Burger Collection, Hong Kong; CAFA Art Museum, Beijing; He Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen, China; Long Museum, Shanghai; M+, Hong Kong; M+ Sigg Collection, Hong Kong; Rubell Museum, Miami; Sammlung Goetz, Munich; Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum; Taikang Art Museum, Beijing; TANK Shanghai; White Rabbit Gallery, Chippendale, Australia; and Yuz Museum Shanghai, among others.
Pace is a leading international art gallery representing some of the most influential contemporary artists and estates from the past century, holding decades-long relationships with Alexander Calder, Jean Dubuffet, Barbara Hepworth, Agnes Martin, Louise Nevelson, and Mark Rothko. Pace enjoys a unique U.S. heritage spanning East and West coasts through its early support of artists central to the Abstract Expressionist and Light and Space movements.
Since its founding by Arne Glimcher in 1960, Pace has developed a distinguished legacy as an artist-first gallery that mounts seminal historical and contemporary exhibitions. Under the current leadership of CEO Marc Glimcher, Pace continues to support its artists and share their visionary work with audiences worldwide by remaining at the forefront of innovation. Now in its seventh decade, the gallery advances its mission through a robust global program— comprising exhibitions, artist projects, public installations, institutional collaborations, performances, and interdisciplinary projects. Pace has a legacy in art bookmaking and has published over five hundred titles in close collaboration with artists, with a focus on original scholarship and on introducing new voices to the art historical canon.
Today, Pace has seven locations worldwide, including European footholds in London and Geneva as well as Berlin, where the gallery established an office in 2023. Pace maintains two galleries in New York—its headquarters at 540 West 25th Street, which welcomed almost 120,000 visitors and programmed 20 shows in its first six months, and an adjacent 8,000 sq. ft. exhibition space at 510 West 25th Street. Pace’s long and pioneering history in California includes a gallery in Palo Alto, which was open from 2016 to 2022. Pace’s engagement with Silicon Valley’s technology industry has had a lasting impact on the gallery at a global level, accelerating its initiatives connecting art and technology as well as its work with experiential artists. Pace consolidated its West Coast activity through its flagship in Los Angeles, which opened in 2022. Pace was one of the first international galleries to establish outposts in Asia, where it operates permanent gallery spaces in Hong Kong and Seoul, along with an office and viewing room in Beijing. In spring 2024, Pace will open its first gallery space in Japan in Tokyo’s new Azabudai Hills development.
For more information about this exhibition and others, please visit the Pace Gallery’s website here. Pace Gallery can be found on Instagram and Artsy, too.
