Perrotin Hong Kong is pleased to present The World Is Wonderful, an exhibition of the latest series of paintings by French artist Bernard Frize, marking his second solo exhibition at Perrotin’s Hong Kong space.

There is a vast art-historical gulf between painting of destruction and destruction of painting. On one side we can count such harrowing representational works as Théodore Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa (1819); on the other, physically distressed canvases like Lucio Fontana’s “cuts” (1958–68). Offering an unexpected bridge between these two metaphorical shores, Bernard Frize’s latest paintings are mesmerizing evocations—both pictorially and physically speaking—of destruction. The paintings presented in The World Is Wonderful are neither narrative nor mutilated, but they owe their creation, in large part, to a kind of sanctioned degeneration. 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 that suggest various celestial bodies. Managing to appear simultaneously vibrant and on the brink of ruin, the series of new paintings presented at Perrotin’s Hong Kong gallery reflect Frize’s complex and ever-evolving relationship to paint, the act of painting and what it means to be a painter.

Gallery address: 807, K11 Atelier Victoria Dockside, 18 Salisbury Road, Tsim Sha Tsui