Exhibition · WKM Gallery · Hong Kong
“What I wanted to ask was this: Could it be that by regarding the softest aspects of humanity, by caressing the irrefutable warmth that resides there, we can go on living after all in this brief, violent world?” — Han Kang, Light and Thread WKM Gallery is delighted to present My tender passion, tender patience, the first solo exhibition in Hong Kong by Japanese artist Soh Souen. This exhibition offers a wide-ranging overview of the artist’s ongoing inquiries into, and practices concerned with, life. The exhibition is on view from 5 September to 31 October 2026. At the center of the exhibition is Again and Again, a series of two-dimensional works created with pastel, a medium the artist has continued to work with over many years. This is the first occasion on which the series has been presented on such an extensive scale. In recent years, Souen has worked simultaneously across performance, project-based practices, and several other painting series. Amidst these other projects, the creation of Again and Again has remained an intensely private activity made during moments of respite and moments of anguish, a salve to quiet the mind on sleepless nights. The process involves an attunement to the sense of touch. The artist’s own skin gently strokes the skin of the painting’s surface; the clothing and adornments depicted are those that remain in intimate contact with the skin, the body. As the painting becomes skin, it tends to the artist in return. The conventional one-directional relationship between the one who paints and that which is painted begins to waver, turning into a reciprocal exchange between the artist’s body and the painting’s body; an encapsulation of the reassurance and vulnerability inherent in touching another person’s body. Eggsercise is one of the artist’s principal performance works, and is presented in this exhibition through archival video. The performance is governed by a simple rule: place a raw egg—a symbol of life—within a hollow of the body,…