The gallery will show Lynda Benglis’s 37-part glazed ceramic sculpture Elephant Necklace Circle (2016) at the first edition of Art Basel Qatar Pace’s presentation of Benglis’s sculpture at the fair will be followed by the artist’s exhibition at the Barbican in London, running from February 12 to May 31, and a solo show of her work opening at the gallery’s New York flagship in November Next year, during the 2027 edition of Art Basel, the Kunstmuseum Basel will open a major retrospective of Benglis’s work.
Art Fairs
Art Basel Qatar
Lynda Benglis
Feb 5 – 7
M7 and Doha Design District
Booth M301
The presentation at the first edition of Art Basel Qatar will showcase American artist Lynda Benglis’s multi-part sculpture Elephant Necklace Circle. This late career glazed ceramic masterwork—which comprises 37 abstract elements rendered in black monochrome and arranged in a circle on the floor—is part of the artist’s Elephant Necklace series in which she explores movement, fluctuation, and organic growth through biomorphic knotted forms.
Benglis began creating her Elephant Necklaces during a burst of creative energy in 2016, just after a group of paper wall reliefs left her studio for an exhibition. She correlates this series of hand wrought, glazed ceramic curls with the blown-out tires of tractor trailer transports strewn on the sides of countless American highways. These works speak to her enduring interest in the morphology and semiotics of the knot, which she has explored since the early 1970s through enactments of tying and folding in her sculptures. Coiling, twisting, and snaking, her Elephant Necklaces evoke entanglement and motion, capturing a moment of bodily expression and thus epitomizing the artist’s notion of “frozen gesture.” “Elephant Necklaces are artifacts that I imagine as extrusions of life,” Benglis has said. “They could be described as fragments from mammoths’ trunks of an ancient time. Or perhaps they resemble strange umbilical cords cut after the
expulsion from the Garden of Eden.”
Prior to the Elephant Necklace sculptures, Benglis made two major bodies of work with extruded clay: one large group, which dates from 1992 to 1998, and the second made in 2013. The ceramic sculptures from both periods merge painting and sculpture through expressionistic and colorful glazes. The Elephant Necklaces are set apart from these two earlier bodies of work by their monochrome coloration, which emphasizes the speeds of their shapes. Striations left by the extruder are the only marks that lead the viewer through the convolutions of their complex forms. Elephant Necklace Circle was first shown in the previously mentioned exhibition of Benglis’s paper works in 2016. Whereasthe paper pieces are painterly and of the air, Elephant Necklace Circle is monochrome and of the Earth. The arrangement of its elements in a circle on the ground came about during the installation process. Instead of situating the sculptures on pedestals, Benglis instead laid them out on the floor, arranging them in a circle to create a single work. Rarely creating a sculpture from so many individual parts, Benglis brings 37 idiosyncratic shapes into a lively, cacophonous conversation with Elephant Necklace Circle—a cyclical convergence that seemingly has no end. Select Elephant Necklaces within Elephant Necklace Circle have been used as models for larger-scale knot forms cast in bronze, including Striking Cobra (2020), a monumental bronze sculpture that was featured in Loewe’s spring/summer 2024 women’s runway show in Paris as part of Benglis’s ongoing collaboration with the fashion house.
Pace’s presentation of Benglis’s work at Art Basel Qatar will be followed by Lynda Benglis Encounters: Giacometti — organized as part of a series pairing contemporary artists’ work with Alberto Giacometti’s sculptures—at the Barbican in London, running from February 12 to May 31, and a solo show of her work opening at the gallery’s New York flagship in November. Next year, during the 2027 edition of Art Basel, the Kunstmuseum Basel will open a major retrospective on the artist—this presentation will travel to two other European museums. Pace is a leading international art gallery representing some of the most influential artists and estates of the 20th and 21st centuries, founded by Arne Glimcher in 1960. Holding decades-long relationships with Alexander Calder, Jean Dubuffet, Agnes Martin, Louise Nevelson, and Mark Rothko, Pace has a unique history that can be traced to its early support of artists central to the Abstract Expressionist and Light and Space movements. Now in its seventh decade, the gallery continues to nurture its longstanding relationships with its legacy artists and estates while also making an investment in the careers of contemporary artists, including Torkwase Dyson, Loie Hollowell, Robert Nava, Adam Pendleton, and Marina Perez Simão.
Pace is pleased to participate in the first edition of Art Basel Qatar, presented at M7 and the Doha Design District from February 5 to 7, as it establishes deeper connections with audiences and collectors in the Middle East. At the fair, the gallery will showcase American artist Lynda Benglis’s multi-part sculpture Elephant Necklace Circle (2016). This late career glazed ceramic masterwork—which comprises 37 abstract elements rendered in black monochrome and arranged in a circle on the floor—is part of the artist’s Elephant Necklace series in which she explores movement, fluctuation, and organic growth through biomorphic knotted forms. A pioneering figure in post-1960s art, Benglis has been at the forefront of material experimentation for six decades, continually inventing new ways of working with different media. Exploring a wide range colors, textures, and forms in her work, she investigates the proprioceptive and sensory experiences of making and viewing sculpture—having a profound impact on contemporary understandings of what sculpture can be. Born in Lake Charles, Louisiana in 1941, the artist began producing ceramics during her college days, returning to the material in the early 1990s, when she initiated a long series of collaborations with the ceramics fabricator Saxe Patterson, Pace to Present Masterwork by Lynda Benglis at Inaugural Edition of Art Basel Qatar The gallery will show Lynda Benglis’s 37-part glazed ceramic sculpture Elephant Necklace Circle (2016) at the first edition of Art Basel Qatar Pace’s presentation of Benglis’s sculpture at the fair will be followed by the artist’s exhibition at the Barbican in London, running from February 12 to May 31, and a solo show of her work opening at the gallery’s New York flagship in November Next year, during the 2027 edition of Art Basel, the Kunstmuseum Basel will open a major retrospective of Benglis’s work
Under the current leadership of CEO Marc Glimcher and President Samanthe Rubell, Pace has established itself as a collaborative force in the art world, partnering with other galleries and nonprofit organizations around the world in recent years. The gallery advances its mission to support its artists and share their visionary work with audiences and collectors around the world through a robust global program anchored by its exhibitions of both 20th century and contemporary art and scholarly projects from its imprint Pace Publishing, which produces books introducing new voices to the art historical canon. This artist-first ethos also extends to public installations, philanthropic events, performances, and other interdisciplinary programming presented by Pace. Today, Pace has nine locations worldwide, including two galleries in New York—its eight-story headquarters at 540 West 25th Street and an adjacent 8,000-square-foot exhibition space at 510 West 25th Street. The gallery’s history in the New York art world dates to 1963, when it opened its first space in the city on East 57th Street. A champion of Light and Space artists, Pace has also been active in California for some 60 years, opening its West Coast flagship in Los Angeles in 2022. It maintains European footholds in London, Geneva, and Berlin, where it established an office in 2023 and a gallery space in 2025. Pace was one of the first international galleries to have a major presence in Asia, where it has been active since 2008, the year it first opened in Beijing’s vibrant 798 Art District. It now operates a gallery in Seoul and opened its first gallery in Japan in Tokyo’s Azabudai Hills development in 2024.
Pace at Art Basel Qatar 2026 | Pace Gallery