Project Room HK — Jonas Lipps: Works on Paper

Ben Brown Fine Arts Hong Kong is pleased to present recent works on paper by Berlin based artist Jonas Lipps, in the Gallery's Project Room, in Pedder Building. This is the artist's first solo exhibition in Hong Kong and the first time his work will be shown in Asia.

This exhibition brings together a group of watercolours in various formats, though rarely extending beyond A4. They show remembered and sometimes previously photographed situations, constructed images, but also elements from public image-banks such as newspaper photos or advertisements. All the genres seem to be included: landscape, portrait, still life, and at the same time none of these, since the thing represented is, though recognizable, never physical, or tangible, or object-like. When using photographic sources, particular parts are emphasized by the tracing of contours, subsequently covered with transparent layers  of  paint.  In  this  kind  of  painting  it's  not  a  question  of  a  demonstration  of  virtuosity,  more  important  is  how,  in  the painting  process,  there  are  repeatedly  changes  of  orientation,  and  detours,  which  result  from  self-imposed  constraints  and resistances. Lipps often works with papers which are badly suited to watercolour, and which through the subsequent loss of
control  over  the  paint  flow,  prevent  a  predetermined  representation.  This  paper  can  be  of  different  origins  and  qualities: leaflets, book pages, or the squared pages of exercise books, partly stained and ripped. On some sheets, by leaving the edge white, a Polaroid-like format comes about, like a passe-partout.