Image: Paul Wesenberg, Phoenix Waters (detail), 2026, oil and oilskins on linen. Courtesy SLAG&RX, New York
SLAG&RX in New York will open ‘Book of Poems’, a solo exhibition by Berlin-based artist Paul Wesenberg (b. 1973), on September 10, 2026. The gallery describes the presentation as Wesenberg’s third solo show with the gallery and says it brings together a new body of paintings made in Berlin over the past year. The exhibition will remain on view through October 17 at SLAG&RX, 522 West 19th Street.
According to the gallery, the title ‘Book of Poems’ is meant as a description of method rather than a literary reference. The paintings are presented as works structured through interval, omission, statement and intervention, with meaning developing through what is withheld as much as through what is shown. The source material frames the series as a poetic analogue in visual form, emphasizing accumulation, rhythm and recurrence over direct illustration or paraphrase.
Wesenberg’s process combines subtraction and addition. The gallery says he begins by “irritat[ing]” the linen with a drill before painting, creating fine channels and occasional “wounds” in the weave. He then adds oil in thin and thick passages and, in some cases, skins of paint formed on Plexiglas and peeled away before being laid onto the canvas. The result is described as a surface that retains the memory of its own making and foregrounds painting as a constructed object.
The new works are said to move through recognizable motifs without settling into straightforward images. The gallery notes fleeting suggestions of horizons, stems, wings and rooflines, while the overall visual register shifts toward a restrained palette of ash, lilac, dove-gray, cobalt, pale blue and violet. In several paintings, a pale unpainted disc interrupts the field, described variously as a moon, an aperture or an absence. Lower areas of the canvases gather denser passages of emerald, rose and gold.
The exhibition follows an earlier palette associated with Wesenberg’s ongoing series. SLAG&RX says the previous works had warmer tones of umber and ember pink, while the new group is quieter and more nocturnal. The gallery’s text characterizes the paintings as operating through accretion rather than argument, asking to be read slowly and more than once. Barry Schwabsky is quoted in the gallery material describing Wesenberg’s work as “a kind of beautiful damage.”
The opening reception is scheduled for September 10 from 6 to 8 PM, with a reading by Schwabsky announced for 6:30 PM. It will also mark the launch of ‘Last Ray’, a limited-edition collaboration pairing a suite of Schwabsky’s poems with an original Wesenberg lithograph included in each copy of the book. Admission is free. The gallery’s own website lists hours as Thursday to Saturday, 10 AM to 1 PM and 2 to 6 PM, with Sunday through Wednesday closed; the wider Tuesday-to-Saturday schedule given in the announcement email is out of date.
