WHAT
In the French artist’s second solo exhibition in the gallery’s Hong Kong space, he presents his latest series of paintings based on the idea that there is a vast art-historical gulf between painting of destruction and destruction of painting. In these colourful almost-experimental works, he offers the world a bridge between that gulf by creating evocations. Unruly paint has been allowed to bleed over the artist’s own brushwork, complicating systematic strokes with smudges, swathes and stains whose amorphous hazy forms suggest various celestial bodies.

WHY
For those who have a distaste for authority, Frize’s reasoning will strike a chord. For over forty years, he had worked on producing multiple large, colourful canvases under strict predetermined conditions, which stifled his self-expression. Now in a retaliatory method, Frize is seizing the opportunity to create large, colourful canvases, which are an extension of his self-expression and showcase his creativity. Managing to appear simultaneously vibrant and on the brink of ruin, the series of new paintings reflect Frize’s complex and ever-evolving relationship to paint, the act of painting and what it means to be a painter.