Richard Misrach: CARGO
Richard Misrach, Cargo Ships (February 26, 2024 6:13 am), 2024 PIGMENT pigment print mounted on Dibond 60" × 80" (152.4 cm × 203.2 cm), image, paper, and mount 62-1/2" × 83" × 3" (158.8 cm × 210.8 cm × 7.6 cm), frame (approx.) signed, titled, dated and numbered verso in ink on label affixed verso on mount © Richard Misrach, courtesy Pace Gallery
New York – Pace is pleased to present an exhibition of recent photographs by Richard Misrach at its 540 West 25th Street gallery in New York. On view from January 17 to March 1, 2025, this will be the first presentation devoted to CARGO, a body of work that Misrach began in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. During the last week of the show, advance copies of CARGO (Aperture, May 2025) will be available to view at the gallery. Pace hosted a talk between the artist and Sarah Meister, Executive Director of Aperture.
Richard Misrach, Cargo Ships (January 18, 2024 10:18 am), 2024 PIGMENT pigment print mounted on Dibond 60" × 80" (152.4 cm × 203.2 cm), image, paper, and mount 62-1/2" × 83" × 3" (158.8 cm × 210.8 cm × 7.6 cm), frame (approx.) signed, titled, dated and numbered verso in ink on label affixed verso on mount© Richard Misrach, courtesy Pace Gallery
Misrach is known for his poignant, large-scale color images that lean into social, political, and environmental issues while also engaging with the history of photography. In his radiant, contemplative works, Misrach—who is based in California—often examines the destructive impact of human interaction with the natural world. His works have examined man-made fires and floods, nuclear test sites, and animal burial pits in the American West; the petrochemical corridor in Louisiana; the landscape of the US-Mexico border; as well as more lyrical subjects like San Francisco’s iconic Golden Gate Bridge and his recent hydrofoil surfer series in Hawaii.
Richard Misrach: CARGO 540 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10001 January 17 – March 1, 2025 Photography courtesy Pace Gallery
Harkening back to his Golden Gate Bridge series—which the artist produced from his front porch over the course of four years beginning in 1997—CARGO centers on the light, water, and weather of the San Francisco Bay. He began creating this body of work in 2021 amid the pandemic and its attendant lockdowns. Captured at different times of day from a single location in San Francisco, these photographs speak to his enduring interest in bearing witness to the world around him from a singular vantage point over the course of months or years.
Richard Misrach Cargo Ships (December 16, 2023 9:11 am), 2023 pigment print mounted to Dibond 60" × 80" (152.4 cm × 203.2 cm), image, paper, and mount 62-1/2" × 82" × 3" (158.8 cm × 208.3 cm × 7.6 cm), frame Edition 3 of 5, Edition of 5 + 1 AP © Richard Misrach, courtesy Pace Gallery
In a statement, Misrach describes this series as a meditation on and celebration of the setting of the San Francisco Bay. With these works, he also contemplates the design, function, and history of the ships in the bay, and all of the thousands of workers implied in the images.
“Behind these ships, there is a remarkable—if invisible—global workforce that builds them, and inhabits them, that packs and unloads them, that maneuvers them over oceans and canals, sometimes in dangerous situations, toward their eventual berths,” Misrach writes. “Along with the extraordinary achievement and value these cargo ships symbolize, they also represent the complex, challenging side of our critical, intertwined, international commerce. In this historical moment, they allude to the threat that is global warming.”
Richard Misrach, Cargo Ships (January 13, 2022 5:25 pm), 2022 PIGMENT pigment print mounted on Dibond 60" × 80" (152.4 cm × 203.2 cm), image, paper, and mount 62-1/2" × 83" × 3" (158.8 cm × 210.8 cm × 7.6 cm), frame (approx.) signed, titled, dated and numbered verso in ink on label affixed verso on mount. © Richard Misrach, courtesy Pace Gallery
Richard Misrach (b. 1949, Los Angeles, California) is considered one of the most influential photographers of his generation, instrumental in pioneering the use of color photography and large-scale format in the 1970s. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1971 with a BA in Psychology. For over 50 years, Misrach has photographed the dynamic landscape of the American West through an environmentally aware and politically astute lens. His visually seductive, large-scale color vistas powerfully document the devastating ecological effects of human intervention, industrial development, nuclear testing and petrochemical pollution on the natural world. His best known and ongoing epic series, Desert Cantos, comprises 40 distinct but related groups of pictures that explore the complex conjunction between mankind and nature. Otherworldly images of desert seas, rock formations, and clouds are juxtaposed with unsettling scenes of desert fires, nuclear test sites, and animal burial pits. Recent chapters capture the highly charged political climate following the 2016 US presidential election through photographs of spray-painted graffiti messages scrawled on abandoned buildings and remote rocky outcroppings in desolate areas of the Desert Southwest.
Other bodies of work include Golden Gate, a careful study of times of day, weather, and light around San Francisco’s famed bridge; On the Beach, aerial views of individuals and groups against a backdrop of water and sand; Notations, ravishing landscapes and seascapes in a reversed color spectrum; Destroy This Memory, a haunting document shot with a 4-megapixel pocket camera of graffiti found in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; and Petrochemical America, an in-depth examination of petrochemical pollution along the Mississippi River produced in collaboration with landscape architect Kate Orff.
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.
The exhibition opened on January 17th and will be on view until March 1, 2025, at Pace Gallery 510 West 25th Street in New York. 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.
