The idea that art is the material manifestation of human spiritual freedom was one of the founding beliefs of the Gutai Art Association, a pioneering post-war avant-garde group which was formed in 1954 under the leadership of painter Jiro Yoshihara in Ashiya, Japan. Yoshihara instructed the member artists to create new work with the mantra, “Do what no one has done before!”  

Axel Vervoordt Gallery is pleased to present this focus exhibition examining Ryuji Tanaka’s oeuvre by revealing the artist’s boundary-pushing material explorations incorporated within his traditional Nihon-ga techniques to ultimately express the beauty of nature through abstractions. Alongside Tanaka’s works from the late 1950s until the 1990s, an important work by Kazuo Shiraga is on view, elaborating a greater context of Gutai and the artist’s enduring connections

Gallery address: 21/F, Coda Designer Centre, 62 Wong Chuk Hang Road.