Few artists have kept their finger on the pulse of the layered cultural, artistic and sociohistorical landscape of Central Asia as firmly as Erbossyn Meldibekov (b. 1964), who has been making works that serve as metaphors for the ever shifting geopolitics of the region since the early 1990s. The Point Becomes a Circle, and Time Turns into a Ball in a Curved Space, the artist’s fourth solo exhibition at Rossi & Rossi Hong Kong, will take place on the 8th of February 2025, showcasing a brand new body of works from the past five years. In them, Meldibekov returns to the visual foundations of his oeuvre, namely the point and the circle, as symbols to expound the art history and its contemporary discourse of the steppes in his native Kazakhstan.

Opening reception: 8 February, 3-6pm

Gallery address: 11F, M Place, Wong Chuk Hang

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word ‘set’ has some 430 definitions – until relatively recently, more than any other word in the book – and they have constantly evolved depending on the context. Hong Kong artist Nicole Wong (b. 1990) delves into the potential for such transformations in Once It Sets, her fourth solo exhibition opening at Rossi & Rossi Hong Kong on 7 December. Fixating on natural and artificial crystalline solids, the artist amplifies or repeats processes of material transformation, thus delineating structural changes during these critical states and illuminating the energy that erupts from them.

Amongst the seven works on view in the presentation, The Definition of Rain (2024) translates the dictionary entry of ‘rain’ into binary code. Opal and glass beads, representing 1s and 0s of the coding language, are strung together into a suncatcher curtain that bisects the gallery space. When visitors pass through it, the code represented by the mineral stones becomes distorted as the swaying movement of the curtain disrupts its sequence and the meaning it embodies. Wong thus draws a parallel between the phenomenon of rain and the construction of meaning. Just as rain is made up of water droplets condensed from atmospheric water vapour, language and its meanings are crystallised through a specific sequence of symbols.

Gallery address: 11F, M Place, 54 Wong Chuk Hang Road

Rossi & Rossi is pleased to present “Masterpieces from the Himalayas”, an exhibition of extraordinary bronzes, sculptures and paintings from India, Nepal and Tibet, exemplifying the finest craftsmanship and artistic legacy from this ancient region.

Gallery address: 11F, M Place, Wong Chuk Hang

Rossi & Rossi is pleased to present the artist’s first solo exhibition in Hong Kong from the 28th September to the 16th November, 2024. The exhibition will be showcasing realistic landscape paintings alongside abstract and figurative works by Bangdel from the 1950s to the 1980s. The artist’s unique position within Modernism is evident in these works. Heavily influenced by the majestic sights of nature, Bangdel often painted the various mountains of Nepal, as seen in Misty Mt. Everest (1978), in which the mountain’s jagged peak contrasts with the gently swirling clouds. For many Nepali viewers, village architecture served as entry points into Bangdel’s abstract works, including A Village near Kathmandu (1963) and Winter in the Valley (1984). In them, the painterly portrayal of a village is replaced by shifting brushstrokes of form and colour.

Lain Singh Bangdel (1919–2002) was Nepal’s foremost artist, novelist, scholar and preservationist. Born in a village near a tea estate of Darjeeling, India, to an ethnically Rai family from the Khotang district of Eastern Nepal, he went on graduate from the Government College of Art and Craft in Calcutta with a degree in Fine Arts in 1945. During his time in Calcutta, he wrote novels in Nepali, including Muluk Bahira (Outside the Country), Aitaghar (Maternal Home) and Langada ko Saathi (The Cripple’s Friend), the last of which later became known as the first realistic work of literature written in the language.

Gallery address: 11/F, M Place, 54 Wong Chuk Hang Road

Reo Ma (b. 1992) manifests his ideas via creative impulses and a lack of inhibitions. Without any formal art training, he approaches art-making like an inventor, experimenting with materials and techniques as he learns through blunders and mistakes. On view at Rossi & Rossi Hong Kong from 27 July to 14 September, Ma’s first solo exhibition, gok3/gaau3, features multimedia assemblages and installations that weave themes of childhood, identity and the tension between the individual and the group. The presentation’s title refers to the romanisation of the Chinese word 覺, with gok3 meaning ‘awakening’ and gaau3denoting ‘slumber’.

In the industrial area of Hong Kong’s Wong Chuk Hang neighbourhood, the artist often collects discarded materials with which he creates new forms. By incorporating rough wood and rusting metal into his works, Ma cautions viewers to keep a safe distance, as the weathered condition of the materials recalls their abandonment. His works also include leather, a nod to his background in fashion design. Soft skin therefore contrasts with hard edges, such as in Crazy Horse(2024), an assemblage of horsehide, metal and wood. In it, visible metal screws and nails fasten pieces of wood to form an anatomically accurate, yet Frankenstein-like, horse’s head. By rejecting the conformist outlook, he simultaneously rejects uniformity as a mechanism of the world.‍

Gallery address: 11F, M Place, 54 Wong Chuk Hang Road, Wong Chuk Hang

Rossi & Rossi is pleased to present In my holding, the first solo exhibition in Asia of Bahamian artist Janine Antoni (b. 1964). Known for her groundbreaking performance works, she uses her body as a conduit, a tool and an anchor for meaning. Antoni’s early methods involved transforming unique materials such as chocolate and soap through habitual, everyday processes like bathing, eating and sleeping to create sculptural works that called attention to the meaning of the making. By way of her body of work, Antoni carefully articulates her relationship to the world, giving rise to emotional states that are felt in and through the senses. In each piece, no matter the medium or image, a conveyed physicality is meant to speak directly to the viewer’s body. The work on view continues to investigate the expressive capacity of the body as well as what it means to live from an embodied place.

Gallery address: 11/F, M Place, Wong Chuk Hang

Rossi & Rossi is delighted to announce the third solo exhibition of British-Pakistani artist Naiza Khan (b. 1968), opening on 23 March through 11 May 2024. On view in UNRULY edges are new oil paintings, drawings and brass reliefs that focus on the changes imposed on bodies of water throughout colonial history. Created in the past two years, each work appears as multi-layered diagrams and maps, a result of Khan’s long research process that explores the mapping of landscapes and infrastructures old and new. The resulting images thread together issues of land, borders, the extraction of natural resources and the geometry of empires.

Gallery address: 11F, M Place, Wong Chuk Hang

Transformed or distorted during the development process, Matthew Brandt’s images expand upon photography’s limits. His oeuvre of process-heavy works will be on view at Rossi & Rossi from 27 January through 9 March 2024 in Learning to Surf, the American artist’s first solo exhibition in Asia. The presentation also showcases a new series of prints on glass titled Swell (2023), substantiated after his September 2023 visit to Hong Kong.

Brandt (b. 1982) photographs subjects that exist through their materiality. For instance, in Lakes and Reservoirs (2011–13), the bodies of water he captured on camera were the same ones in which the resulting C-prints were bathed. The artist had no control over how the emulsion layers would react to the collected lake water, only how long the photographic papers were soaked. Hence, each unique result is erratic in its faithfulness to the original image.

Gallery address: 11/F, M Place, 54 Wong Chuk Hang Road

Rossi & Rossi is pleased to announce Dark, the gallery’s second solo exhibition of the work of Szelit Cheung (b. 1988). The Hong Kong artist carefully layers shades of orange, green and blue to produce meticulous spatial compositions on canvas that both define darkness and make viewers aware of it. Opening on 18 November, the presentation features new paintings that extend Cheung’s ongoing investigation into the essence of emptiness and void.

Buttressed by minimalistic interiors, the artist’s paintings trace the illumination of a space by a single light source, often through a window, a skylight or an opening in a wall. Cheung fixates on light: the basic element that makes up the human visual perception of dimensions. The luminosity in his works directs the viewer’s gaze to identify structures, whilst the perpetual ray of light in the frame halts the sense of time. This stillness – in which one’s mind finds comfort to linger – is akin to the state of encountering the sublime. In the exhibition’s forthcoming catalogue, art historian and curator Penny Dan Xu likens Cheung’s ‘negative images’ to Japanese architect Kengo Kuma’s ‘negative architecture’, in which structure is similarly unsubstantial, and meanings are not constructed through symbolic or narrative representation. Rather, Cheung’s works urge the audience to be present in order to build a reciprocal relationship in the viewing experience.

The thematic focus of Dark arises from the artist’s continual attempts to capture the essence of the void. Taking a turn from highlighting the sense of void and emptiness through complex architectural forms, the paintings in Dark are simpler in their composition, near the point of abstraction. Structural features, such as corners, openings and walls, still exist, but they dissolve into rudimentary forms and fade into a complex depth of colours. In this way, Cheung’s works straddle the line between figuration and abstraction, leaving viewers to decide what they see. 

Gallery address: 11/F, M Place, 54 Wong Chuk Hang Road, Wong Chuk Hang

Spirituality is a broad, etymologically ever-evolving concept. Humans turn to it for a multitude of reasons: to seek divinity, to reach transcendence from within, to foster kinship. The contemporary market also adapts the concept, cleverly rebranding it as as ‘mindfulness’. Opening on 23 September at Rossi & Rossi Wong Chuk Hang, Out of Sight outlines interpretations and expressions of the intangible and elusive matter of spirituality. Through paintings, drawings and sculptures by a diverse array of artists, including Billy Apple, Siah Armajani, Massimo Antonaci, Janine Antoni, Fereydoun Ave, Konstantin Bessmertny, Matthew Brandt, Szelit Cheung, Gade, Amal Lin, Norste, Shubigi Rao, Nicole Wong and Tom Wudl, the exhibition delves into the universal subject of spirituality, which transcends times, cultures and individuals, and presents a minuscule fraction of what spirituality means.

Gallery address: 11F, M Place, 54 Wong Chuk Hang Road, Wong Chuk Hang

Splinter, Hong Kong Artist Mark Chung’s third solo exhibition will open at Rossi & Rossi on July 29th, 2023. Through a series of new installations and video works, Chung continues his autobiographical practice and attempts to translate the complex psychology in the uncomfortable aftermath of dramatic changes. The exhibition brings to light the cognitive dissonance between make-believe and disillusioned reality. The title of the exhibition references the long and painful process one must go through when a splinter punctures a body – it is either forcefully ejected from the body, or absorbed in as new tissue growth envelops the intrusive foreign object.

Gallery address: 11/F, M Place, 54 Wong Chuk Hang Road, Wong Chuk Hang

Italian artist Elisa Sighicelli is thrilled to present her second solo exhibition at Rossi & Rossi Hong Kong: Petits Rats, on view from 20 May through 4 July 2023. The presentation’s title is derived from the nineteenth-century French term les petits rats, which was used to describe young ballerinas-in-training at the Paris Opera. The world and the moving bodies of the dancers inspired many of Edgar Degas’s works, including his iconic bronze sculptures of dancers, seventy-three of which were recently on view in the 2020 exhibition Degas from the permanent collection of the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP). Sighicelli photographed this assemblage in MASP’s storeroom when the works were in their post-cataloguing state, labels draping alongside their limbs and torsos. With a single source of lighting, these photographs infuse Degas’s works with movement. Deviating from Sighicelli’s past exploration of the materiality of images, this project focusses on the making of image and narrative.

Sighicelli (b. 1968) has been working extensively with sculpture in her photography practice since 2018. To counter the dematerialising of her photographed sculptures, she prints images of ancient works in stone and marble to conjoin the subject shot and the object produced. With a shared materiality, her images meld into their objects, rather than replacing them. Whilst her current practice is still based on the relationship between photography and sculpture, as well as image and object, her focus delves deeper into the relationship between objects.

The artist’s desire to humanise objects started with As Above, So Below (2022). Sighicelli had been commissioned to photograph the sculptural works in the depository of GAM (Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea) Milano. These sculptures, placed in random proximity, proposed different relationships and dynamics. The artist finds meaning amongst the un-staged sculptures and elicits their dramatic interactions through the combination of specific lighting and careful framing.

Gallery address: 11F, M Place, 54 Wong Chuk Hang Road, Wong Chuk Hang

Rossi & Rossi is thrilled to be presenting the first ever survey of Indian-born Singaporean artist Shubigi Rao (b. 1975) in our Wong Chuk Hang space from 18 March to 13 May, 2023. 

Rao is known for her long-term, multidisciplinary projects, comprising layered installations of books, etchings, drawings, pseudo-scientific machines, metaphysical puzzles, video, ideological boardgames, garbage and archives. Her interests include archaeology, neuroscience, libraries, archival systems, histories and lies, literature and violence,ecologies and natural history.

Her art, books, films, and photographs look atcurrent and historical flashpoints as perspectival shifts to examiningcontemporary crises of displacement, whether of people, languages, cultures, orknowledge bodies. As an artist, Rao critically, poetically and wittily examinesthe systems of knowledge that structure our world. Her immersive and tongue-in-cheek works range from creating archaeological archives of garbage, writing How To manuals for building a nation and a culture from scratch, discovering and diagnosing peculiar forms of urban malaise where digital dandruff and pixel dust accumulate like lint and cloud the contemporary brain, building immortal jellyfish, to pseudo-museums regenerating mechanisms of knowledge accumulation, storage, and destruction.

Gallery address: 11F, M Place, 54 Wong Chuk Hang Road, Wong Chuk Hang

Cotton in the Ears, Furball in the Throat is Hong Kong artist Nicole Wong’s (b. 1990) third solo exhibition with Rossi & Rossi. Working beyond a single medium, Wong’s practice investigates the tenuous connections between words, objects, and image, inviting introspective reflection through the exploration of ideas such as failure, hope, and miscommunication. Central to the theme of this exhibition this time is both a yearning for comfort – a sentiment that many of us experienced  throughout the pandemic – and the feeling of uneasiness about being inches away from it.

On view is a new series of lenticular prints titled But What Happens When Skin Falls? (2021). In each work, the artist overlaps images of handwashing with images of hand-created shadow puppets. For Wong, having to keep hands clean during the pandemic became a recurring motif, and these repeated motion is as if an ombromanie ritual one performs before any form of physical engagement. While the title of the series points to a potential gruesome end from all the handwashing, it can also be seen as a senseless question asked by an impatient child. Through this arrangement, Wong alludes to the psychological regression that human beings experience during a time of crisis.

Also on view is The Institution of International Blue (2017). The work consists of nine poems, each typed on a single sheet of paper and pinned neatly on a blue bulletin board. In researching different forms of language, Wong discovered that, despite having a much limited vocabulary, the accuracy and exactitude of sign language is on par with spoken language. To explore this gap between forms of language, the artist interprets and translates the nuance of gestures into poems by using the hand signs of the colour blue from different countries as the starting visual prompt. Seen together in a single bulletin, each poem and hand-sign pair points to the impossibilities of language and the relationship between a sign and its meaning.

Gallery address: 11/F, M Place, Wong Chuk Hang

Journey is Taiwanese artist Amal Lin’s (b. 1992) debut solo exhibition. Lin studied watercolour and oil painting at a young age, and her interest in Middle Eastern art started when she was exposed to the Arabic language and calligraphy as an undergraduate student at the University of Jordan. This fascination quickly turned into a passion as Lin enrolled in the Prince’s Foundation School of Traditional Arts in London to further her practice. Her paintings therefore draw heavily from the Persian miniature tradition, depicting the artist’s inner spiritual reality with extreme detail.

Persian miniatures, which are small, Persian-style paintings done on paper, are often seen used as illustrations or intended to be kept in an album called a muraqqa. Characterised by their vibrant colours due to the heavy use of mineral-based pigments, miniatures became a significant genre in Persian art around the thirteenth century. Their small size means that their owners can store them easily and choose who else can see them. This aspect of the works resulted in an intimate and personal viewing experience, as opposed to looking at wall paintings, the other dominating art form of the time.

The paintings in Journey are based on Lin’s own journey of recovery from a severe eating disorder. For the artist, the process of producing Persian miniatures demands absolute concentration: from grinding her own mineral pigments to burnishing shell gold details painted on hand-dyed paper, the repetitive movements required at each stage of the painting process is akin to meditation. In the process, Lin allows herself and her ego to dissolve and reveal what she sees in her inner reality.

Gallery address: 11/F, M Place, 54 Wong Chuk Hang Road, Wong Chuk Hang

On the banks of the Lhasa River, Nortse’s studio overlooks the magnificent Himalayas. Legend has it that this is the spiritual mountain of Langdarma, the last tsenpo, or king, of the Tibetan Empire (618–842). The artist (b. 1963) has spent most of his time here since 2019 creating the body of works that comprise The Golden Earth, his second solo exhibition at Rossi & Rossi Hong Kong. The exhibition is on view at the gallery’s Wong Chuk Hang space from 26 November 2022 to 21 January 2023.

Amongst the more than one dozen works on view in the exhibition is the eponymous The Golden Earth (2021), in which Nortse arranged prayer flags on a canvas into the shape of a mushroom cloud, as if they were coming out of an exploding atomic bomb. Ready-made objects, such as a shotgun, a watch, a cross, a stethoscope, masks, sieves and random plastic items, are interspersed throughout the creases of the flags. In Tibet, people believe that prayer flags can help to carry blessings on the winds of karma. Traditionally, these conduits of well-wishing have contained handwritten scriptures; but in modern times, they have become mass-produced, machine-printed onto synthetic materials. In this work, the artist painted a six-word Buddhist mantra on the flags, which is meant to transmit the Buddha’s compassion and wisdom. The work, itself, is a reflection on the industrial era as well as critical survival crises – in particular, ecological disasters, the energy crisis and the global pandemic – that humanity faces in this century.

Gallery address: 1/F, M Place 54 Wong Chuk Hang Road

When two turbaned Samarkandis reached the borderland of the Middle Kingdom, they offered the Chenghua Emperor (r. 1464–87) a magnificent foreign beast, a lioness. The long journey across the Central Asia heartland had tired the animal; nevertheless, it appeared majestic. The court painter dutifully reproduced this scene. The resulting painting, The Lioness (1483), will be featured at Rossi & Rossi in From the Himalayas to the Heartland, on view from 24 September until 5 November 2022.

Over the painting is a fu, or prose, written by Chenghua, himself. The emperor was well versed in the art of poetry and calligraphy, and his fu speaks of this unique tribute, which was sent by Sultan Ahmed of Samarkand. It describes, at length, the mysterious and portentous animal of the distant western states and is signed with the sultan’s personal seal. 

This event was documented in The Standard History of the Ming (Ming-Shih), under the section titled Samarkand, in the fourth chapter named Western Region. Such an offering illustrates the workings of the imperial Ming dynasty’s tribute system, in which a network of trade, ritualistic and diplomatic exchanges existed between the Emperor of China and the heads of state of various nations in Asia. The Ming emperor was recognised as the centre of power and representatives of other polities were required to journey to the Chinese capital periodically. They brought distinct treasures from their respective lands to present to the emperor as gestures of good will and solidarity. 

Gallery address: 11F, M Place, 54 Wong Chuk Hang Road, Wong Chuk Hang

A Collection in Two Acts opens on July 16 through September 16 at Rossi & Rossi Hong Kong. Curated by Chris Wan, the exhibition utilises the private collection of Yuri van der Leest to present two frameworks of collectorship: one is institutional, such as museums and archives — treating artworks as files to be dealt with under a given context of art history; the other is personal, like a private collection built with artworks as repositories of memories and personal encounters. Through the use of critical fabulation, the two modes of art collecting are juxtaposed to raise a question about the structure and agency in the art system. ‍

Critical fabulation, coined by Saidiya Hartman in her essay Venus in Two Acts,means a semi-fictional and semi-true fabulated narrative. Drawing reference from this concept, Collection in Two Actsfabulates two art-collecting subjects by dividing the gallery into two exhibition halls, and displaying artworks collected by van der Leest over the past seven years in two disparate formats. The display of Hall 1 invokes a sense of public organisations, where art is collected for exhibition, educational, and research purposes to offer narratives about the past and present. Exhibits are aligned with their finishing date, each with their annotation — however, in addition to rigidly formatted information about titles and medium, artists’ own writings are included in the published material. By introducing the human component to the documentation of art, artists are given more autonomy to how their works are archived. The current method of documentation is thus questioned: has the power of institutions superseded the individual? Who is the subject in history?

Gallery address: 11/F, M Place, 54 Wong Chuk Hang Road

Leang Seckon (b. 1970s) has lived through some of the most volatile and violent years in modern Cambodia, and his works frequently derive inspiration from the country’s tumultuous history. The artist’s haunting canvases recall events from the French occupation to King Sihanouk’s brief boom to the US-backed coup d’état, which saw the country under Vietnamese army boots, to the signing of the Paris Peace Accords to the present day. And his immensely rich compositions expertly weave stories, at times gruesome and at times magical, from his personal history into fablelike vignettes.

Opening at Rossi & Rossi Hong Kong on 21 May, Growing Wings features Seckon’s latest body of work that condenses the dazzling changes in his home country into compositions interspersed with mythic Khmer folklore. This is the artist’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery.

Gallery address: 11F, M Place, 54 Wong Chuk Hang

Siah Armajani and Rasheed Araeen – two diaspora artists who both migrated to the West – invented their own unique responses to the ingrained socio-political phenomenon of their respective societies through art. Opening on 2 April at Rossi & Rossi Wong Chuk Hang, Two Manifestos features works by these artists from the 1970s that mirror their individual experiences in cultures foreign to them. The exhibition also covers more recent works that show the synthesis of the art language each one developed. 

For this edition of #SouthsideSaturday, Rossi & Rossi will be screening short video works created by Armajani and Araeen through our session on Zoom. 

The short films include:

Siah Armajani
Equator, 1970, computer generated 16mm film (black & white, silent)

Line, 1970, computer generated 16mm film (color, silent)

Rasheed Araeen
'Paki Bastard' - Portrait of the artist as a Black Person
video recreation in 2015, originally performed 31st July, 1977

Gallery address: 11/F, M Place, 54 Wong Chuk Hang Road, Wong Chuk Hang

Born in Dharamsala to Tibetan parents and raised in Switzerland, Kesang Lamdark has one foot in the East and the other in the West. New exhibition focusses on the artist’s practice, which reflects his ongoing negotiation with his Tibetan heritage in a multicultural environment.

Lamdark’s vast repertoire ranges from melted plastic, beer cans and light boxes to both recycled and upcycled readymades. The artist often utilises traditional images derived from Tibetan folklore and religion, reworking and blending them with icons from industrial and consumerist cultures. As writer Maxwell Heller argues in his 2011 essay for the artist’s solo exhibition Son of Rimpoche , ‘[F]or every measure of spiritual levity in his work, there is an equal amount of skepticism, materialistic obsessions, hedonism and pop-culture worship – and this is what holds our curiosity’

Gallery address: G/f, 195 Hollywood Road, Sheung Wan

On 17 February 2022, Rossi & Rossi returns to Hong Kong’s Southern District with a new space on the eleventh floor of M Place at 54 Wong Chuk Hang Road. The inaugural exhibition, running until 12 March features iconic works of all the artists represented by Rossi & Rossi, offering a comprehensive look at the scope of the gallery’s renowned contemporary programme.

Founded in London by Anna Maria Rossi in 1985, Rossi & Rossi opened its first Hong Kong space in 2013, expanding the gallery’s offerings in classical and contemporary Himalayan arts to include even more under-represented regions in Asia. Located in the industrial area of Wong Chuk Hang, the gallery showcased an array of artists with diverse backgrounds and practices. In July 2021, it relocated to Hollywood Road, where presentations focussed on the exploration and reinterpretation of Asia’s regional history. We are now delighted to commence a new phase with a fresh space in Wong Chuk Hang designed by BEAU, located in the industrial area of Wong Chuk Hang, the gallery showcased an array of artists with diverse backgrounds and practices.

Gallery address: 11/F, M Place, Wong Chuk Hang

Opening at Rossi & Rossi Hollywood Road on 18 December 2021, Precious Ones: Tibetan Tulkus examines the representation of tulkus in the Himalayan tradition of image-making. The exhibition is comprised of photographs of Tibetan tulkus from acclaimed British-Belgian photographer Martine Franck (1938–2012) as well as a selection of classical bronzes and paintings depicting Buddhist spiritual masters from a wide range of historical periods in Tibet.

A vernacular expression, tulku literally means ‘phantom body’ or ‘emanation body’. One who holds the title is commonly addressed as Rimpoche (‘Precious Jewel’) and counted in the Tibetan tradition as a lama or a guru (spiritual guide). As embodiments of boundless compassion and beneficence, tulkus willingly take on recurring births in order to spread out their good acts and, thus, benefit as many sentient beings as possible with each reincarnation.

Gallery address: 195 Hollywood Road, Sheung Wan

Italian Renaissance painter Raphael created The School of Athens to celebrate the intellects that laid the groundwork for Western philosophy. He brought scholars of different schools and eras under the arch of an imaginary grand hallway, facilitating discussions among philosophers and mathematicians from ancient Greece. Centuries passed, and the fresco upholds itself as a symbolic piece that epitomises the spirit of Renaissance, especially in that of rejuvenating and reinventing classicism.

In view of how Raphael imagined the School as a symposium for the Greeks to gather traversing temporal and geographical boundaries, Vittoria Chierici envisioned herself as a student at the School, having the capacity to experiment on the techniques and theories of painting. From October 23rd to December 4th 2021, Rossi & Rossi Hollywood Road is presenting The Philosophers’ Clothes to showcase Chierici’s interpretation of The School of Athens. The works are like pages of her learning journal, and viewers witness her progress as she realises the connection of different ideas.

Address: 195 Hollywood Road, Sheung Wan

Many of the teachings of Buddhism were originally passed down orally through repetition and communal recitation. These spoken words were later compiled into important canons and manuscripts that ultimately constituted a rich corpus of Buddhist literature. Revered across all schools and sects of Buddhism, these texts are considered profoundly sacred. In order to protect their contents from damage over time, monasteries and wealthy families commissioned elaborate manuscript covers.

Guardians of the Sacred Word – Part II, on view at Rossi & Rossi Hollywood Road, Hong Kong, from 11 September to 16 October, showcases a selection of exceptional Indian and Tibetan manuscript covers dating from the 10th to the 14th century. This is the second iteration of Guardians of the Sacred Word, an exhibition of rare early Tibetan manuscript covers that the gallery mounted in New York in 1996.

Gallery address: 195 Hollywood Road, Sheung Wan

From the Mountains, on view at Rossi & Rossi Hollywood Road, Hong Kong, from 16 July to 27 August 2021, showcases a selection of sculpted heads from Gandhara created between the fourth and fifth centuries AD. These works were fashioned from clay and embellished with painted details, each one revealing a distinctive expression, hairstyle and facial features. The soft nature of the clay made these incredible details possible to mould; however, it also left the works vulnerable to erosion. As a result, many of the sculptures in the exhibition have a timeworn appearance, yet the range of emotions emanating from the lively faces remains palpable. Alongside the Gandharan sculptures, a series of black-and-white photographs taken in the mountains of Iran by late renowned Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami (1940–2016) is on view. Kiarostami captured these wintry landscapes, titled Snow (2002), during solitary escapes into nature as a form of therapy, a break from the urban sprawl. He painstakingly chose his frames, at times during an uninterrupted 3,000-kilometre journey, activating his shutter only three times during the entire trip. Through the gaze of his camera, Kiarostami offered a contemplation on nature, encased in its tranquillity and divorced from the actualities of everyday life.

Gallery address: Hollywood Road G/F, 195 Hollywood Road Sheung Wan

Opening on the first Saturday of July, 𝘚 𝘱 𝘢 𝘤 𝘦 presents the creation of Szelit Cheung out of his two month long artist-residency at Rossi & Rossi. As an extension of his fascination with the void, he reinterprets the gallery space by accentuating the qualities of light, shadow, and colour. 𝘚 𝘱 𝘢 𝘤 𝘦 will mark itself as the final show at this gallery space which Rossi & Rossi has inhabited since 2013, and it pays tribute to the space through a mix of paintings and two installation works which are Cheung’s first attempt in the genre.

Gallery address: 3/F, Yallay Building, Wong Chuk Hang