{"data":{"id":"3508","type":"artist","attributes":{"id":3508,"topgoose_id":414,"tms_id":3508,"display_name":"Paul Thek","sort_name":"Thek Paul","display_date":"1933–1988","begin_date":"1933","end_date":"1988","biography":"\u003cp\u003ePaul Thek was one of the most prescient artists to emerge during the 1960s, yet his work remained largely unrecognized for decades. Having begun his career as a painter, Thek traveled in 1963 with the photographer \u003ca href=\"/artists/3952\"\u003ePeter Hujar\u003c/a\u003e to Palermo, Italy, where he visited the Catacombs and observed the accumulations of skeletons there, openly displayed in boxes. A lapsed Catholic, he found the sight unforgettable, and the trip precipitated a turning point in his art.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOn his return to New York, however, Thek was confronted with a sculptural practice completely at odds with his thinking about the body and mortality. Interest in the figure and materiality had been superseded by the industrially produced sculpture of the prevailing Minimalist style. In reaction Thek embarked on a series of works he later named \u003ca href=\"/collection/works/8323\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eTechnological\nReliquaries\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, sculptures that directly imitated body parts, which he encased in plexiglass boxes. \u003cem\u003eUntitled\u003c/em\u003e is a replica of a tubular section of flesh, with what looks like blood and bodily fluids oozing out at one end. A facsimile of fat and skin encases the surface, covered with nylon-monofilament “hairs” that protrude through the chartreuse container. “My work is insulting to our sense of the humane,” Thek wrote of these pieces, and “insulting to art history in terms of subject matter, the way some of the abstractionists insulted history in a formal, plastic way.” Thek lived in Europe for much of the 1970s, organizing collaborative theatrical installations. The impact that his \u003cem\u003eTechnological Reliquaries\u003c/em\u003e and installations had on sculptors such as \u003ca href=\"/artists/3105\"\u003eMike Kelley\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"/artists/3523\"\u003eRobert Gober\u003c/a\u003e in the 1980s has led to the posthumous recognition of Thek’s art.\u003c/p\u003e","on_view":false,"artport":false,"biennial":false,"collection":true,"ulan_id":"500097373","wikidata_id":"Q1346819","created_at":"2017-08-30T15:39:41.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-04-09T07:03:55.150-04:00","links":{"artworks":"/api/artists/3508/artworks","exhibitions":"/api/artists/3508/exhibitions"}}}}