Artist: Maria Lassnig

The oeuvre of the seminal painter Maria Lassnig covers an incredible lifespan of more than 70 years of intense work between the end of the Second World War and her death in 2014.

At the center of her profound research into painting we find a unique interest in the relation between awareness and the human body—the artist’s body—which Lassnig calls Body Awareness. It is research that is fuelled by an occupation with philosophical and scientific theories on perception. Examples include texts by the Austrian scientist and philosopher Ernst Mach and those of her peer and close friend, the Austrian writer Oswald Wiener, with whom she undertook perceptual experiments in the 1970s. Lassnig questions the perception beyond the visual, how our body senses as a whole. She also explores the ways in which language becomes part of such perceptions, leading to her lifelong interest in literature and friendships with such eminent poets as Paul Celan and Friederike Mayröcker. Within this research, the human body is subject to change, it is morphing constantly, sometimes even into the mythological.

Titled ‘Self with Dragon,’ this is Maria Lassnig’s first solo exhibition in Hong Kong. With this selection of paintings, the show attempts to provide an insight into Lassnig’s approach to such reflections and their manifestation on the canvas.