Art Basel Hong Kong

David Zwirner is pleased to participate in Art Basel Hong Kong 2021. The gallery’s presentation will focus on new works by Belgian-born, New York–based artist Harold Ancart, among important works from Josef Albers, Mamma Andersson, Marcel Dzama, Giorgio Morandi, Neo Rauch, Gerhard Richter, Thomas Ruff, Wolfgang Tillmans, Luc Tuymans, Liu Ye, and Lisa Yuskavage. 
 
Ancart works in various media, including painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, and sculpture. In his art, Ancart depicts subjects that naturally invite contemplation, such as the horizon, clouds, flowers, flames, and architectural forms. At Art Basel Hong Kong, the artist will present a group of works that depict seascapes. 
 
Historically, the sea has served as an emotionally charged, yet elusive metaphor for ideas of life and loss, and threat and salvation, while also evoking meditative reflection and the romantic sublime. At the beginning of 2020, Ancart began working on a series of seascape paintings, reducing the subject to its most simple figurative form. He segments the composition with a stark horizon line, dividing sky and ocean. This formal contrast dissects the painting from a figurative whole into abstract parts, turning the tranquil seascape into a meditation on painting itself. Like other comparable motifs within the artist’s oeuvre, the vividly colored cloudy sky functions in an anthropomorphic way, alluding to the endless possibilities and personalities of organic forms.