Claes Oldenburg: Six Themes at Paula Cooper Gallery

Paula Cooper Gallery presents Claes Oldenburg: Six Themes at 534 West 21st Street in Chelsea, from November 5 to December 19, 2026. Organized with the Estate of Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen, the exhibition brings together sculpture, drawings and prints.

The show looks back to a 1975 survey organized by Martin Friedman for the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, which then travelled to the Denver Art Museum, Seattle Art Museum, New Orleans Museum of Art and the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. This is the first exhibition in fifty years to concentrate on that body of work.

The six themes are the Geometric Mouse, Three-Way Plug, Fagends, Clothespin, Typewriter Eraser, and Standing Mitt with Ball. Oldenburg chose subjects for their form and for how readily they change scale; a small clothespin, he said, could be as interesting as one a hundred feet high. Most are ordinary objects, and the Typewriter Eraser is now obsolete. The Geometric Mouse is the exception: it grew out of a movie projector seen in profile and became a stand-in for the artist, a symbol of analysis and intellect. Public versions of the themes include Typewriter Eraser, Scale X at the National Gallery of Art's Sculpture Garden and the Clothespin in Philadelphia's Center Square.

Oldenburg seldom used found objects, preferring to rebuild each one so it was both artwork and object. He worked with fabricators around the country, notably Lippincott, Inc. in North Haven, Connecticut, which made large-scale versions of the Fagends, Clothespin, Typewriter Eraser and Geometric Mouse. A vitrine of images from the Lippincott archive documents that fabrication process.

The works come from the artist's estate and from public and private collections. Pieces shown on the gallery's site include Study for a Civic Sculpture in the Form of a Mitt and Ball (1974), a 1968 Typewriter Eraser notebook page, Geometric Mouse – Scale C (1971, anodized aluminum), Model for a Mahogany Plug, Scale B (1969), Fagend Study, Prototype (1976, with Coosje van Bruggen) and the soft Clothespin – 4 Ft. (1975, canvas and kapok). An illustrated brochure with a text by David Platzker accompanies the show.

On Saturday, November 14 at 11:00 AM, Rachel Harrison and Alex Kitnick will lead a guided walkthrough.