The artist's first solo exhibition in East Asia
Hauser & Wirth presents Frank Bowling. Like Water, the celebrated artist's first solo exhibition in East Asia. Spanning six decades — from the 1960s to 2020 — the exhibition traces the recurring current that has flowed through Bowling's work throughout his career: water. The title draws on Bowling's own memories of growing up in Guyana, where water was ever-present.
The presentation moves from early canvases that fuse the figurative, the symbolic and the abstract — including Untitled (Mother's House) (1966), a nostalgic evocation of his Guyanese childhood — to the purely abstract language he arrived at by 1971. At its heart are the Poured Paintings Bowling began around 1973, made by tilting vast canvases and letting paint cascade across their surface: a technique that remains one of the defining innovations of contemporary abstraction. Later works such as Crevice Reflecting Morning Light (1977), Spawn (Cold as a Dog's Nose) (2007) and There Be Dragons (2020) extend this into layered, object- laden and cut-canvas compositions.
Accompanying the exhibition is a new essay by Hou Hanru, which considers Bowling's lifelong engagement with water and draws parallels between his experimental methods and traditional Chinese aesthetic and philosophical ideals. A bilingual (English / Chinese) digital booklet accompanies the show.
Born in British Guiana in 1934, Bowling came to London in 1953 and graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1962, where he was awarded the silver medal for painting. Now 92, he continues to paint every day in his South London studio.