ART CITIES:Hong Kong-Openings 21/3/16

Park Seo-Bo is considered one of the leading figures in bringing the European Modernist concept of art to Korea in the late ‘50s after the Korean War. The expressionist tendency at that time was partially influenced by French Art Informel in an attempt to bring Eastern calligraphy into contact with Western forms. “Ecriture” is the title of his solo exhibition at Gallerie Perrotin. His “Ecriture” series of paintings began in the late ’60s, the early “Ecriture” works, executed on cloth or paper, involve layers of milky white or pale gray paint over which Park has drawn repetitive, unidirectional pencil lines. He has said that the repetitive gestures and monochromatic environments of these works are a way of emptying the painting of the self, and achieving a unity with the nothingness in nature. However, the title of the series refers to writing, an inherently individualistic act. The paintings demonstrate the persistence of the monochrome since, despite these regular incisions into the white paint, from a distance they appear to be only one color, or perhaps, an empty painting. Info: Gallerie Perrotin, 50 Connaught Road Central, 17th Floor, Hong Kong, Duration: 21/3-5/5/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.perrotin.com

“When I’m Gone”, is Dan Colen’s first solo exhibition in Hong Kong, and the first dedicated in his series of the Flower Paintings. In his paintings, Colen questions the very meaning and power of making marks on a canvas. With the Flower Paintings, Colen relinquishes control of the painterly mark and turns the action of the brushstroke into a smashing or shattering gesture. Instead of paint, natural seasonal and artificially dyed flowers from corner bodegas and markets in New York City were employed to mark the canvas, applied with quotidian objects. Residual petals and pistils, adhered by Colen’s own pressure, are reminders that these works exist in the physical, as well as metaphysical, world. In these paintings, Colen has collapsed the distance between subject and object, the represented and the representative—the image of the flower, made by the flower—in his ongoing quest for what lies at the heart of the act of artistic transformation. Info: Gagosian Gallery, 7/F Pedder Building, 12 Pedder Street, Central, Hong Kong, Duration: 21/3-13/5/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:0019:00, www.gagosian.com

Tracey Emin, who came to prominence as an artist in the ‘90s, is internationally celebrated for her challenging, profound, and deeply poetic work across a wide range of media. 21/3/16 marks Emin’s first solo presentation in Greater China with two in Galleries with the exhibition “I Cried Because I Love You”. Tracey Emin has envisaged a continuous exhibition of painting, embroidery, and neon across the two Galleriew that reflects the diversity of her practice. In a series of drawings Emin recollects a marriage ceremony that took place in France last summer, where she wore a white shroud originally made to adorn her father’s body at his funeral. For Emin, her union with the stone–an immovable and solid form–becomes a metaphor for stability and enduring love. Info: Lehmann Maupin, 407 Pedder Building, 12 Pedder Street, Central, Hong Kong, Duration: 21/3-21/5/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:00-19:00, Sat 11:00-19:00, www.lehmannmaupin.com  & White Cube Hong Kong, 50 Connaught Road, Central, Hong Kong, Duration: 21/3-21/5/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, During Art Basel Hong Kong the gallery will be open: 21/3  9:30-19:00,  22-25/3 10:00-19:00,  http://whitecube.com