Paul Thek, an artist whose work centered on themes of transience, decay, and loss, is receiving renewed attention through two current exhibitions in Manhattan more than three decades after his death from AIDS in 1988. The shows, “Paul Thek: Dream of Vanishing” at Pace Gallery and a separate exhibition at Galerie Buchholz, offer a comprehensive look at the artist’s career, which spanned sculpture, painting, and installation art.

A native of New York, Thek rose to prominence during the 1960s with a series of innovative works that challenged traditional artistic conventions. His early sculptures, known as “Technological Reliquaries,” consisted of wax and latex forms resembling meat encased in clear Plexiglas boxes. These pieces, inspired by a visit Thek made in 1963 to the Capuchin catacombs in Palermo, Italy, echo the macabre display of mummified bodies arranged by monks. Thek’s fascination with decay extended to his use of materials, embracing the natural aging process of Polaroids and latex to underscore themes of impermanence.

Throughout his career, Thek collaborated with notable figures such as theater director Robert Wilson and writer Susan Sontag, who credited him with inspiring the title of her essay collection “Against Interpretation.” Despite early successes, Thek struggled with personal challenges, including drug use and paranoia, symptoms that intensified after his return to New York in 1975. He took on menial jobs to make ends meet but continued his artistic practice until his death at age 54.

The Pace exhibition provides a retrospective of Thek’s evolving style, tracing his development from abstract oil paintings influenced by Abstract Expressionism to later works featuring newspapers as canvases. Unlike contemporaries who layered newspapers beneath paint, Thek applied gouache or oil directly to the paper, leaving parts exposed to yellow over time. The show also features early body casts and smaller-scale sculptures, including a plaster casting of painter Audrey Flack’s finger and “Untitled (Hand With Ring),” a painted cast of Thek’s own hand.

While some of Thek’s more theatrical and notorious works, such as his 1967 installation “The Tomb,” are now lost, photographic documentation provides insight into their unsettling impact. His installations often operated as mutable “processions,” evolving over the course of exhibitions rather than presenting fixed displays. Religious symbolism, especially drawn from Thek’s Roman Catholic upbringing, repeatedly surfaced in his art, exemplified by a feather-covered cross from 1969 meant to evoke ritualistic procession.

Galerie Buchholz highlights Thek’s painterly side with a series of intimate blue seascapes painted daily on newspaper sheets during his time on the Italian island of Ponza in the 1970s. The exhibition also showcases his embrace of “bad painting,” a style marked by crude figuration and playful, often pun-driven titles such as “Bread and Buttocks” and “Church of the Holy Molar.” Several small works are installed low on the walls, playfully confronting the critique that his art could be done by children.

Friends and collaborators recount Thek’s increasing aloofness later in life. Robert Wilson recalls an incident with a Munich art dealer who expressed interest in buying Thek’s paintings, but was rebuffed by the artist’s suspicions and erratic behavior. Despite the difficulties, Thek maintained a sharp wit and a defiant spirit. Near the end of his life, he produced a series of colorful “Big Bang” paintings that mockingly confronted the AIDS crisis with both grim humor and a celebration of life’s inevitable finale.

These exhibitions mark a significant reassessment of Thek’s influence, underscoring his unique contribution to contemporary art and his lasting resonance with new generations of artists.