PAUL THEK

Paul Thek sketched and painted throughout his life, portraying friends and loved ones, documenting his surroundings and giving form to conscious and unconscious thoughts and desires. Painting and drawing seized the artist with joy, and beyond, provided a form of idiomatic religious fervour. Unlike his sculptural works, which often confront the viewer with their visceral physicality, Thek’s paintings offer a quieter, more delicate meditation on life and experience. Using watercolour, gouache and ink, Thek created dreamlike compositions, often featuring poetic sentences or brief texts infused with spiritual and existential undertones. Transient by nature, the sheets of newsprint on which Thek frequently painted become themselves a profound metaphor, reflecting the fleeting moments of thought and emotion that the artist sought to capture. From Thek’s early technical drawings to his sublime landscapes of Ponza and the Mediterranean coastline, and finally his iconic New York cityscapes and abstract compositions combining text and symbols, the exhibition will offer a window onto the more intimate and personal realms of Thek’s visual universe.

Paul Thek was born in Brooklyn, New York, and emerged in the 1960s as a radical voice in contemporary art, challenging conventional aesthetics with formally and psychologically complex works. He is best known for his ‘meat pieces’, hyper realistic wax sculptures of flesh, and his immersive environments, such as The Tomb (1967), which explored themes of mortality, spirituality and the human condition. Thek’s work defies easy categorisation, blending elements of Pop Art, Minimalism and Conceptual Art while maintaining a deeply poetic and introspective quality. Institutional exhibitions include Paul Thek at MAMCO, Geneva, Switzerland (2024); Paul Thek: Diver at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York NY (2010–2011), travelling to the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh PA (2011), and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles CA (2011); Paul Thek: Works in the Context of Contemporary Art, ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany (2007–2008), travelling to Sammlung Falckenberg, Hamburg, Germany (2008), and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain (2009). Thek’s work is held by institutions in the United States, England, Germany, France and The Netherlands.

Kenny Schachter is an artist, writer and lecturer. Schachter has written on Paul Thek for MIT Press, in addition to a book with Vito Acconci for Springer-Verlag. He has a regular column on Artnet News and co-authored The NFT Book, published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2023. He contributes to various international publications including The Art Newspaper, New York Magazine and The Times Magazine in the UK. In 2023–2024, Schachter had a mid-career survey of his work at the Francisco Carolinum Museum in Linz, Austria, accompanied by a publication, and in 2018 a retrospective at Joel Mesler’s Rental Gallery, New York. He is represented by Nagel Draxler Gallery in Germany and Jupiter Gallery in New York.

Jonathan Anderson is a designer with a curatorial approach to fashion making and brand building, renowned for his innovative and modern interpretation of both womenswear and menswear. Born in Northern Ireland in 1984, Anderson launched his eponymous label, JW Anderson in 2008, quickly gaining critical acclaim and commercial success. In 2013, he was appointed Creative Director of LOEWE, which he turned into a cultural brand with a prismatic identity weaving a vibrant interest for craft with a cerebral yet playful approach to design. In 2016 he founded the LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize, the world’s first international award for contemporary craft, and a year later, curated the Disobedient Bodies exhibition at The Hepworth, Wakefield. Since 2019, he has been a Trustee to the Board of the V&A. For his work, Anderson has received numerous accolades, including International Designer of the Year Award by the CDFA and multiple British Fashion Awards, earning him a place in Time Magazine’s Most Influential People of 2024 in their Time100 list.