Painting Itself/绘画本身 is an exhibition of five painters from Hong Kong, Malaysia, London, Shanghai and Singapore. The exhibition explores a new horizontal culture in painting, where fundamental ideas about its history and vitality—long the influence of European and American values—are being reshaped in East and Southeast Asia.

A common understanding is that painters look for the ‘face’ of their work, that aspect of a painting that looks back at them. Each of the artists in the exhibition takes on this idea—they lean into the mood and character of their own painting, with its inner constraints and struggles. Painting Itself/绘画本身 prompts us to reflect on how contemporary painting works to interlink and traverse geography and time, re-positioning the western art economy through an Asian lens.