Exhibition · Axel Vervoordt Gallery · Hong Kong
Axel Vervoordt Gallery is pleased to present Scroll Paintings, a solo exhibition of works by Mexican artist Bosco Sodi. This marks Sodi’s sixth solo presentation with the gallery and his second in Hong Kong since 2020. Known for his richly textured, vividly coloured paintings, Sodi’s practice focuses on material exploration, the creative gesture and the spiritual connection between the artist and his work. Scroll Paintings debuts a new body of work that emerged from the extended time the artist spent in his Kyoto studio over the past few years. There, immersed in a different kind of silence, Sodi turned his attention away from building mass, towards something more elusive: holding a moment. The resulting paintings are quiet yet profound contemplations of time, expressed through languages of materiality and form. Sodi’s longstanding affinity with Asian culture began more than two decades ago, when he was invited to an artist residency in Tokyo. Since then, the philosophical concept of wabi-sabi has been a vital thread running throughout his practice. Embracing imperfection, transience, simplicity, and the generative forces of nature, Sodi has consistently used raw, natural materials to create objects and paintings that embody the deep emotive power present in the simplicity of material and pigment. His process is fundamentally a dialogue with these materials. As layers of earth, pigment, and organic elements are applied and left to dry, they crack, shift, and form structures beyond his control. Unpredictability and chance become collaborators, with each finished piece becoming both memory and relic — a tangible record of the intimate conversations between artist and material. In Scroll Paintings, Sodi extends this dialogue by engaging with the traditional scroll format — a form rich in discipline and history, deeply admired by the artist. For him, materials are never neutral; they carry life long before he approaches them. Each scroll in this body of work is…