Pace Gallery is bringing a rarely seen chapter of American abstract painter and sculptor Sam Gilliam’s practice into focus with STITCHED, a landmark exhibition presenting works created during the artist’s 1993 residency at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation in Ireland.
Marking the US debut of this body of work, the exhibition traces its origins back to an unexpected logistical challenge. Unable to transport his signature petroleum-based paints overseas due to safety restrictions, Gilliam adapted his process entirely. In his Washington, D.C. studio, he pre-stained large canvases, then folded and shipped them to Ireland as raw material.
Once there, Gilliam worked with a local seamstress to cut and reassemble the painted fabrics, transforming them into dynamic, stitched compositions. The resulting works blur the line between painting and sculpture, combining vibrant colour fields with tactile, constructed form.
At Pace, the exhibition includes both the stitched wall pieces and a series of volumetric, balloon-like hanging sculptures. Several of these works are being shown in the United States for the first time, with some making their global debut. Suspended in space, the sculptural forms expand Gilliam’s exploration of movement and material, pushing beyond the traditional boundaries of the canvas.
What emerges is a body of work defined as much by constraint as by innovation. Faced with material limitations, Gilliam reimagined his approach, producing compositions that feel at once improvised and meticulously constructed. The interplay of folded surfaces, stitched seams, and saturated colour results in pieces that resist easy categorization, sitting somewhere between textile, painting, and sculpture.
STITCHED offers a compelling look at Gilliam’s ability to transform circumstance into experimentation, underscoring his lasting influence on postwar abstraction.
The exhibition is on view at Pace Gallery in New York through April 25, 2026.
