David Byrne: Stairwell Drawings

You climb a flight, turn onto the landing, and a figure your own size is waiting on the wall. Byrne drew nine of them straight onto the stairwell walls between the first and seventh floors, over several days in April 2025. Pace says he made them life-size in the hope that people would "confront" them.

The Talking Heads co-founder has been drawing since art school, and first showed with Pace in 2003. He told Artnet in January that a drawing expresses an idea "quickly and immediately", before reworking makes it more seductive and loses that. It's the rare Chelsea show where the elevator is the wrong way in.

The catch is that it's easy to miss: one visitor guide reckons half of Pace's visitors never see it. Walk up from the first floor. The stairwell closes while Pace installs new shows, as it did this summer until 10 September. Entry is free, and Pace lists the run to 31 December 2026 but says the drawings stay indefinitely.