GROUP EXHIBITION

Anchored in Dubuffet’s “anti-cultural” celebration of art brut, this exhibition focuses on the medium of paper to explore how these artists perform a reverse alchemy, transmuting the gilded surfaces of “high art” back into its base elements—the raw, crude, and unhewn matter of mark-making—dismantling and exploding the figure in the act of rendering it. On view from May 2 through June 14, the exhibition inaugurates Pace’s new chapter in Berlin by reflecting on the outsized and profoundly disruptive influence of Dubuffet on both the history of art and the shape of contemporary practice.

Coinciding with Gallery Weekend Berlin, Reverse Alchemy is one of two inaugural exhibitions at Die Tankstelle, a new art space—with galleries, offices, and an adjacent cafe and bookshop—housed in a converted 1950s gas station and shared by Pace and Galerie Judin. In a concurrent, complementary presentation, Galerie Judin will present an exhibition dedicated to Tom of Finland, an artist whose practice similarly challenged the distinctions between high and low art.

Pace’s exhibition juxtaposes a suite of late works on paper by Dubuffet dating from the late 1970s and 1980s with drawings that the young Basquiat—59 years Dubuffet’s junior—made during precisely the same time. Dubuffet’s and Basquiat’s works from the 1980s provide a context for recent works on paper by contemporary artist Robert Nava. Nava’s sensibility extends a legacy of expressive mark-making coupled with the rejection of traditional hierarchies in art, reflecting the continued influence of both Dubuffet and Basquiat on contemporary practice. Curated by Pace’s Chief Curator, Oliver Shultz, the exhibition follows the gallery’s solo presentations of Dubuffet—whom Pace has represented since 1967—and Nava this spring in New York. It also builds upon Dubuffet and Basquiat, a 2006 exhibition organized by Pace Founder and Chairman Arne Glimcher at Pace New York, which explored Dubuffet’s direct influence on Basquiat’s aesthetic.

Reverse Alchemy is presented on the occasion of Pace’s 65th anniversary year, during which the gallery is mounting exhibitions of work by major 20th century artists—with whom it has maintained decades-long relationships—at its spaces around the world.