The Monster
Huma Bhabha Untitled, 2024 WORK ON PAPERink, pastel, acrylic, charcoal, and collage on paper53-1/2" × 52"(135.9 cm × 132.1 cm)Framed: 59 1/8 x 57 5/8 x 2 1/4inches (150.2 x 146.4 x 5.7 cm)© Huma Bhabha, courtesy the artist and David Kordansky Gallery
Los Angeles – Pace is pleased to present The Monster, an exhibition curated by artist Robert Nava, at its Los Angeles gallery. The exhibition opened on February 1 and will be on view until March 22, 2025, this presentation will bring together paintings, sculptures, and works on paper by an intergenerational group of artists—including several LA-based artists—within and beyond the gallery’s program and will coincide with this year’s edition of Frieze Los Angeles.
The Monster Curated by Robert Nava 1201 South La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90019 February 1 – March 22, 2025 Photography courtesy Pace Gallery
Inspired in part by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, this exhibition, organized by Nava in collaboration with Pace’s Chief Curator Oliver Shultz, will celebrate monstrous bodies and fabulations of monstrosity in contemporary art—not the everyday monsters of waking life, but rather the fantasy monster, the monster of childhood, the mythical beast, the shapeless creature of the unconscious. This monster is a pre-image, an inchoate nightmare, a being neither human nor animal with the power to both terrify and enamor.
The Monster Curated by Robert Nava 1201 South La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90019 February 1 – March 22, 2025 Photography courtesy Pace Gallery
The Monster will feature works by Huma Bhabha, Louise Bourgeois, Willem de Kooning, Jean Dubuffet, Nicole Eisenman, Ficre Ghebreyesus, Thomas Houseago, Rashid Johnson, Li Hei Di, Robert Longo, Tala Madani, Paul McCarthy, Ugo Rondinone, Lucas Samaras, Peter Saul, Cindy Sherman, Kiki Smith, and Paul Thek, alongside other significant figures of the 20th and 21st centuries. With a focus on modern and contemporary figuration, the show will reflect Nava’s sensibility and include work by Nava himself, as well as other contemporary and emerging painters. A special presentation of works by Thek will anchor the exhibition.
Lucas Samaras Untitled, January 6, 1985 PAINTING acrylic on canvas36" × 24" (91.4 cm × 61 cm) 38-1/8" ×26" × 1-5/8" (96.8 cm × 66 cm × 4.1cm), framed ©Lucas Samaras, courtesy Pace Gallery
Populated by a cast of hybrid and chimaeric bodies, at once mythic and everyday, Nava’s paintings and drawings navigate the space between the raw and the refined. Often imbued with a sense of philosophical and psychological charge, his figures suggest a dark, contemplative, and existential mood despite their vibrancy, liveliness, and humor. Nava takes inspiration for his distinctive lexicon of characters and forms from a diverse range of sources, from ancient art to mythology and religion to horror films, science fiction, video games, and cartoons.
The Monster Curated by Robert Nava 1201 South La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90019 February 1 – March 22, 2025 Photography courtesy Pace Gallery
Many of the artists in The Monster have impacted Nava’s point of view. Trafficking in the language of the uncanny and the grotesque, the figures that proliferate in these works are formless monstrosities of the imagination. Horrifying as they may be, they help us understand that a monster might, in the end, be the most human being of all.
A full artist list and further programming details will be announced in due course.
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.
