An Unconventional World of Objects and Materials

Pace Gallery will present Lucas Samaras: Boxes and Reconstructions at its 540 West 25th Street location in Chelsea from November 6, 2026, through January 23, 2027. The exhibition brings together two important bodies of work by the Greek-born American artist: his celebrated box sculptures, created between the 1960s and 1980s, and a group of fabric-based works from his little-known Reconstructions series of 1979.

The presentation offers an opportunity to reconsider an artist whose practice consistently resisted conventional categories. Across sculpture, photography, painting, drawing, and digital art, Samaras developed an intensely personal visual language in which ordinary materials became vehicles for examining identity, memory, and the human psyche.

The exhibition is particularly significant because the Reconstructions works, drawn from the artist’s personal collection, will be shown publicly for the first time. Presented alongside the box sculptures, they reveal unexpected connections between two seemingly different approaches to making art.

The Box as a Self-Portrait

Samaras began developing his assemblage-based sculptures in the late 1950s, while studying at Rutgers University and participating in New York’s emerging Happenings movement. His box series began in the early 1960s and eventually grew to include nearly 300 individual works.

These objects are far removed from conventional containers. Built with compartments, drawers, hinged structures, and intricate interiors, they incorporate an extraordinary range of materials: mirrors, photographs, cutlery, nails, feathers, yarn, and other found objects. Liquid aluminum and plaster helped secure these elements to their surfaces, creating compositions that are simultaneously sculptural, architectural, and painterly.

The boxes invite viewers to look inside, discover hidden details, and examine the relationships between objects. Their layered structures can feel intimate and unsettling, turning the act of looking into an encounter with something private.

For Samaras, assemblage was closely connected to selfhood. Personal history, collected fragments, and everyday materials became components of an artistic identity. Rather than presenting a straightforward autobiography, the artist constructed complex visual environments in which the self appeared fragmented, concealed, and continually reconstructed.

The selection at Pace traces the development of this approach, from the relatively straightforward hinged construction of Box #5 (1963–1968) to the expansive, imaginative world of Box #133 (1989).

Rediscovering the Reconstructions

The exhibition’s other central focus is the Reconstructions series of 1979. These large-scale fabric works demonstrate a different but closely related approach to assembling materials.

Made from hand-sewn fabrics, the compositions bring together contrasting patterns, colors, textures, and shapes. Their surfaces are visually energetic, with individual elements merging into intricate arrangements that can resemble abstract paintings.

Samaras’s interest in fabric had personal roots. He recalled childhood experiences in Greece, including visiting a cousin who owned a dress shop. As a child, he was fascinated by the textiles but discouraged from touching them. In adulthood, his use of fabric, pins, and wool became a way of returning to those early experiences on his own terms.

That autobiographical connection gives the Reconstructions works an additional emotional dimension. They are not simply experiments with textile materials; they transform memories and personal associations into complex visual structures.

Although their appearance differs from the box sculptures, both bodies of work share an interest in collecting, arranging, and transforming fragments of the world. In the boxes, objects occupy carefully constructed spaces. In the fabric works, patterns and materials combine across expansive surfaces. Each approach turns assemblage into a means of expression.

A Career Beyond Artistic Categories

Born in 1936 in Kastoria, Greece, Lucas Samaras grew up amid the upheaval of the Second World War and the Greek Civil War. He immigrated to the United States with his family in 1948, settling in New Jersey. He studied at Rutgers University, where he encountered artists and educators including Allan Kaprow and George Segal, before continuing his education at Columbia University in New York.

His involvement in the city’s avant-garde community brought him into contact with artists including Jim Dine, Red Grooms, and Claes Oldenburg. His early participation in Happenings helped establish an artistic outlook that embraced experimentation, unconventional materials, and the transformation of everyday experience.

Samaras joined Pace Gallery in 1965, beginning a long relationship with the gallery. His work has since been presented by major institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 2009, he represented Greece at the Venice Biennale.

He died in New York in 2024, leaving behind a body of work that continues to challenge distinctions between artistic disciplines.

Reconstructing the Meaning of the Everyday

At Pace Gallery, Boxes and Reconstructions brings together two important chapters of Samaras’s artistic exploration. The exhibition reveals how his interest in ordinary materials developed into a distinctive language of personal expression, where objects and textiles become carriers of memory and identity.

The box sculptures offer intricate, sometimes unsettling spaces that reward close observation. The fabric works expand that approach into vivid compositions that challenge the boundary between craft and painting. Together, they demonstrate the artist’s ability to make familiar materials feel strange, psychologically charged, and visually compelling.

For visitors exploring Chelsea’s contemporary art scene, the exhibition offers a rare opportunity to encounter previously unseen works alongside some of Samaras’s most recognizable creations. More than a retrospective of particular objects, it is an invitation to consider how the fragments of everyday life can be assembled into an imaginative portrait of the self.

Exhibition Information

• Artist: Lucas Samaras
• Exhibition: Boxes and Reconstructions
• Venue: Pace Gallery
• Dates: November 6, 2026 – January 23, 2027
• Opening Reception: November 5, 2026, 6–8 PM
• Address: 540 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10001
• Neighborhood: Chelsea, Manhattan
• Gallery Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 AM–6 PM