All Walks of Life

Past
Dec 15, 2023 – Jan 18, 2024
Hong Kong

Exhibition Details:

All Walks of Life
Dec 15, 2023 – Jan 18, 2024

Gallery:

12/F, H Queen's
80 Queen's Road Central
Hong Kong

Press:

Press Release

Connect:

(opens in a new window) @pacegallery

Above: Katja Farin, Missed Shot, 2023 © Katja Farin, courtesy of the artist and In Lieu Gallery

Pace is pleased to present All Walks of Life, a group exhibition highlighting the work of seven young artists from the United States and Europe, at its Hong Kong gallery.

On view from December 15, 2023 to January 18, 2024, the show will feature new and recent paintings by Anthony Cudahy, Katja Farin, Aubrey Levinthal, Laurent Proux, Daisy Sheff, Sarah Slappey, and Fabian Treiber. An opening reception for the exhibition will be held at the gallery on December 14 from 6 to 8 p.m.

Organized by independent curator William Zhao, All Walks of Life meditates on the nuances and subjectivities of daily life in the face of globalization. The vibrant works in the show—which range from figurations to landscapes to semi-abstract, lyrical tableaus—explore what it means to be an individual, both bodily and spiritually, in the present moment. Offering a focused look at contemporary painting, this exhibition centers on collisions of uncanniness and familiarity in experiences of people, places, and things.

Included in All Walks of Life are two new paintings by Farin in which bizarre details cut across everyday scenes. Exploring the ways that illusions of the self, of safety, prosperity, and community are sustained by our belief systems, Farin’s boldly colored, theatrically staged figurations are rife with mystery and ambiguity. Proux, meanwhile, depicts fragmented limbs and faces in his up-close figurations, with bodies intersecting and overlapping in carefully posed contortions—the artist has said that he aims to engage viewers of his work with “a visual and intellectual enigma running through the image.”

Slappey’s surreal depictions of intertwining body parts in Carpet of Needles (如坐針氈) (2023) and Emerald Strike (2023), both on view in All Walks of Life, are underpinned by a distinct sense of disquiet that the artist has characterized as "a kind of quiet violence." Mining the cruelty and pain baked into idealized notions of femininity, the artist is known for her opulent, dynamic figurations that belie the darkness of their content.

Drawing inspiration the varied images he collects as part of his practice, Cudahy creates intimate, deeply personal figurations that examine the present through the lens of the past, forging a portrait of intergenerational queer experience. In Treiber’s otherworldly landscapes, negotiations of space and enactments of interiority and exteriority speak to the shapeshifting nature of perception.

Levinthal’s paintings, on the other hand, often feel like film stills, with figures moving through the rhythms of their everyday lives. She imbues her depictions of characters in ordinary, seemingly mundane situations with emotional and poetic depth, hinting at larger narratives behind fleeting moments of movement and stasis. Meanwhile, Daisy Sheff constructs her bright, whimsical, sometimes fantastical canvases with multiple layers of paint, forging works that “offer glimpses into detailed, private narratives” through a unique visual language that blurs the boundary between figuration and abstraction.