NEW YORK, NY.- Pace announced its representation of artist Li Hei Di, who explores human embodiment, displacement, and intimacy in luminous paintings that blend abstraction and figuration. In their vibrant, dreamlike canvases—where ghostly, translucent bodies and body parts oscillate in and out of view amid abstract forms and washes of color Li embeds latent narratives about gender, desire, and emotional fluidity for viewers to uncover and decipher.

Primarily a painter, they also work across sculpture and performance, mediums that complement their otherworldly meditations on canvas.

Pace will represent Li in conjunction with Michael Kohn Gallery and Pippy Houldsworth Gallery. The artist will present their first solo show with Pace in Hong Kong in 2025, and a new, never-before-exhibited painting by the artist will be featured on the gallery’s booth at this year’s edition of Art Basel Miami Beach.

Li’s team at Pace will be led by Joshua Friedman, who has worked closely with the artist since the beginning of their career in his previous role at Michael Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles. Friedman, who recently joined Pace as a Senior Director in LA, was a Partner at his former gallery for nearly ten years, working across sales, client and artist relations, exhibitions and art fair programming, and business management to grow the gallery’s global profile and engage new audiences. During his tenure there, he shaped the careers of emerging artists, including Li, by facilitating major institutional exhibitions and acquisitions worldwide. Li’s painting Unquenchable Laughter (2023) was acquired by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art earlier this year, and most recently, their paintings entered the collections of the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio, the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, Italy, and the Rachofsky Collection in Dallas, Texas.

As a Senior Director at Pace in LA, Friedman will work with the gallery’s existing leadership team, playing a key role in refining its program and continuing to build its collector base on the West Coast. With his expertise in the LA art world, he will help tailor Pace’s programming in the city for local audiences, focusing on exhibitions by emerging artists as well as large-scale group shows that situate intergenerational artists in dialogue with one another.

Li will mount their first Pace exhibition with support from Evelyn Lin, the gallery’s newly appointed President of Greater China, who will harness the potential for growing the artist’s profile and audience in Asia.

Samanthe Rubell, President of Pace Gallery, says: “We’re so thrilled to welcome Li Hei Di to Pace. Their incredible technical skill, rigorous investigations of sex and gender, and morphing of languid figures into luminous abstractions have made them one of the most inventive young painters working today. Li will work closely with Joshua Friedman, an early champion of their practice, and Evelyn Lin, whose deep connection to contemporary Chinese artists and collectors in Asia will be invaluable for the artist’s first solo show in Hong Kong next year. Through their bold and inventive visual vocabulary, Li has become an important new voice that we’re excited to amplify as we share their practice with our audiences around the globe.”

Evelyn Lin, Pace’s President of Greater China, says: “I’m so pleased to be working with Li Hei Di on their debut solo exhibition with the gallery, which is also their first-ever solo show in Hong Kong. This is exactly the kind of presentation—spotlighting a bright new figure at the start of their career— that I want to organize at Pace in Hong Kong. Li’s work and their unique perspective will resonate deeply with our audiences in Asia, and I’m looking forward to seeing this landmark moment in their career next year.”

Joshua Friedman, Senior Director of Pace in Los Angeles, says: “I’ve had the pleasure of working with Li Hei Di for many years, and I’ve watched their practice expand into new spaces and directions. Their ability to synthesize so many ideas and feelings on the canvas—issues of sexuality and identity, references to literature and film, and reflections of their own subconscious, inner world—is remarkable, and I can’t wait to see where their art goes with Pace’s institutional support.”

Born in Shenyang, China in 1997, Li currently lives and works in London. Having received their master’s degree in painting from the Royal College of Art in London in 2022, they have presented solo exhibitions at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery in the English capital; Michael Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles; and LINSEED Projects in Shanghai. Li’s work has figured in recent group exhibitions at the Yuz Museum in Shanghai, Le Consortium in Dijon, France, and Marquez Art Projects in Miami, as well as the 2023 X Museum Triennial in Beijing.

Eschewing preparatory sketches or any kind of premeditated vision, Li creates their paintings as part of an intuitive process that unfolds across the canvas. Fluid and organic, their paintings contain complex scenes and stories— punctuated by flashes of absurdist humor—that defy any single reading or interpretation. Fragmented bursts of light can be traced across their layered compositions, where semi-transparent figures and biomorphic forms hide and reveal themselves at different moments. The colors and images in the artist’s paintings are reflections of their subconscious, frequently coming to them in dreams.

“They are possibilities, not conclusions,” Li has said of the figures in their paintings. “They are forever in transition, but not in a hurry to become someone.”

Li draws inspiration for their paintings from literature, including works by bell hooks, Byung-Chul Han, Maggie Nelson, and Paul B. Preciado, among other writers. They often borrow lines from poetry for the titles of their paintings, alluding to fleeting feelings and essences that are difficult to name.

Li’s work can be found in a number of major collections around the world, including the Shah Garg Foundation in the US; the Long Museum in Shanghai; and the Yageo Foundation in Taiwan.