HONG KONG.- Gagosian is presenting Persephone, Mary Weatherford’s first solo exhibition in Asia, on view at the gallery in Hong Kong. In the new paintings on view, Weatherford explores light and color, and pursues her interest in found materials, collage, and neon through a mythological theme that resonates with the changing seasons.
Persephone features luminous paintings in vinyl emulsion paint on linen. Some are augmented by colored neon tubes, seashells, or coral. In Greek mythology, Persephone is stolen from earth to become queen of the underworld; upon her return she presides over springtime renewal. As in the Chinese myth of Nian, a hibernating beast that emerges at year’s end, her story explains the cycle of seasons: when Persephone is abducted by Hades, her mother Demeter’s grief causes all plant life to cease. An eventual compromise requires Persephone to spend part of the year below ground, and the other part on earth, allowing spring flowers to bloom, bees to buzz, and blue summer skies to bring joy. Weatherford’s new series imagines the earthquake of Persephone’s disappearance and her journey into radiance, representing her achievement of new life.
The Hong Kong exhibition unfolds over a sequence of three spaces designed by acclaimed architectural firm Johnston Marklee, each of which can be glimpsed from the one that precedes it. The narrative’s themes of transformation and rebirth have been features of Weatherford’s work since her exhibition I’ve Seen Gray Whales Go By at Gagosian New York in 2018. Persephone finds Weatherford interweaving these preoccupations with an exploration of the hero’s journey and coming of age. In this, Weatherford also draws inspiration from early paintings by Robert Smithson that juxtapose above- and below-ground scenes, some of which come from a series inspired by Dante’s Inferno, possibly the most famous and influential depiction of the underworld.
Included in the exhibition is the monumental Landslide (2025), named for the 1975 Fleetwood Mac hit written by singer Stevie Nicks at her piano on a winter’s day in Aspen, Colorado. Additional paintings build on Sea and Space, Weatherford’s 2024 exhibition at Gagosian New York.
Complicating associations with the natural world, Persephone pays homage to the history of neon light—the groundbreaking invention debuted in 1910 at the Grand Palais, Paris—and its relationship to modernism. Hong Kong lives in the collective unconscious as one of the great cities of light along with Paris, New York, and Las Vegas. Weatherford’s use of the vintage technology to punctuate the paintings’ fresco-like surfaces mirrors Hong Kong’s nostalgic and still-active love affair with the neon on show in Mong Kok and along Lockhart Road in Wan Chai to this day.
