Isn’t Love the Strangest Thing
Colour feels like music in Stanley Whitney’s Isn’t Love the Strangest Thing at Gagosian Hong Kong. Opening on September 10, 2026, the exhibition marks Whitney’s first solo show in Asia, bringing new and recent paintings to the gallery’s Central space. The title comes from a 1936 jazz standard recorded by Duke Ellington and His Orchestra, with vocals by Ivie Anderson. That musical reference is more than a mood-setter. Jazz runs through Whitney’s paintings in the way colours answer one another, clash, pause, and return. A red might push against blue. A yellow might open up the whole surface. Each painting moves with its own rhythm. Since the 1990s, Whitney has built his work around loose grids of stacked rectangular blocks. The structure is simple, but never stiff. Horizontal bands hold the composition together, while the painted squares feel spontaneous, breathing, and alive. Like jazz, the works balance discipline with improvisation. At Gagosian Hong Kong, the paintings range from intimate twelve-inch works to larger canvases measuring up to seventy-two inches square. Seen together, they show how Whitney can create emotional force through colour alone. His paintings do not tell stories in a direct way. Instead, they create feeling through tempo, weight, contrast, and touch. The exhibition also includes works from his Roma and Stay Song series. The Roma paintings reflect Whitney’s years in Rome, where ancient walls, uneven stonework, and weathered surfaces helped loosen his grid. The Stay Song works continue his interest in poetry, rhythm, and the lyrical possibilities of abstraction. What makes Isn’t Love the Strangest Thing so rewarding is its warmth. These paintings are structured, but they are also deeply human. They carry the joy, uncertainty, and emotional shifts suggested by the exhibition title. At Gagosian Hong Kong, Whitney turns colour into rhythm and painting into a kind of song. Stanley Whitney: Isn’t Love the Strangest Thing is on view at Gagosian…