HONG KONG.- Welcoming art aficionados from around the world that flock to the city as art season descends upon Hong Kong, Massimo De Carlo announced that it is presenting in Hong Kong a unique exhibition that brings together for the first time the work of Roland Flexner and Ai Weiwei. The dual-artist exhibition is on view at the Hong Kong gallery space from 20 March 2017 to 14 May 2017.

The two artists first crossed paths in New York in the 80s and have since developed an on-going friendship. In this exhibition, Roland Flexner’s iconic ink paintings are being shown together with a body of work by Ai Weiwei, which is being exhibited here for the first time and includes a series of paintings tracing back to his days in New York.

Ai Weiwei’s intimate homage to the delicacy of the human condition, composed of a set of porcelain bones arranged in a vitrine, is being shown alongside a new Lego work created for the exhibition and a never before seen body of work, which revolves around the notion of painting.

In each of the square black paintings, dating back to the early 90s, Ai Weiwei has removed parts of the acrylic painting exposing the paint below. This gesture is key in this series, where the rhythmic revealing of the paint underneath the surface questions the role of traditional painting.

Roland Flexner’s two series of ink drawings presented in the exhibition are part of his iconic body of work. In these carefully crafted drawings, the artist explores how chance can interfere with creation, by developing a series of unique techniques that avoids direct contact between him and the paper. Flexner uses manipulation, breath, water or gravity in order to move the ink on the paper, pushing the final results into pictorial dimensions, documenting the potential of the material and the control of the gesture.

Both artists are united by an exploration of the limits of painting and of what stands beyond those limits, where gestures and different techniques broaden the horizon of material potential and the narratives embedded in the material itself.