November is shaping up to be a very good month for art in Chelsea.
On November 6, Pace Gallery New York will open three exhibitions across its West 25th Street spaces, moving from dreamlike new paintings to rarely seen works by an American avant-garde icon and a major installation by one of contemporary art’s most provocative duos.
Here is what to see.
Li Hei Di: the year of mud
At 540 West 25th Street, London-based artist Li Hei Di will present their first solo exhibition with Pace in New York since joining the gallery in 2024.
The new paintings document a year of personal transformation, taking inspiration from the Chinese goddess Nüwa, who, according to mythology, created humans from mud. For Li, that material becomes a metaphor for possibility, transition, and the search for a form to inhabit. The resulting compositions are atmospheric and fluid, existing somewhere between abstraction, memory, and the body.
Lucas Samaras: Boxes and Reconstructions
Also at 540 West 25th Street, Pace revisits two defining sides of Lucas Samaras’s practice.
Boxes and Reconstructions pairs his enigmatic box sculptures from the 1960s through the 1980s with fabric works from his little-known 1979 Reconstructions series, some of which have never been exhibited before.
Samaras transformed everyday materials into intensely personal objects, exploring identity, memory, and selfhood throughout his seven-decade career. The exhibition offers a chance to see his famous assemblages beside an almost hidden chapter of his work.
Elmgreen & Dragset: TRANSITION
A few doors down, at 508 and 510 West 25th Street, Elmgreen & Dragset will take over the galleries with TRANSITION, a major new installation.
The duo is known for transforming exhibition spaces into uncanny environments that question how we behave, what we expect from public spaces, and how ordinary objects change when removed from their familiar context. Details remain intentionally limited for now, which only makes this one more intriguing.
Three exhibitions, three completely different reasons to head to Chelsea this November.
