IN THE SIGHT OF A MAN
M+M Gallery is honored to announce the grand opening of its Hong Kong space, launching with the groundbreaking exhibition In the Sight of a Man. This pioneering exhibition serves as a mirror, reflecting the multifaceted selves projected by male artists onto the canvas—whether it be the scrutinized self, the hidden self, the fragmented self, or the infatuated self. Through their works, the artists paint their lovers, celebrate their beliefs, and project impressions of their homeland in a symphony of color and line. They weave solitude, longing, passion, and nothingness into a timeless act of self-contemplation, while re-examining the complexity of male subjectivity in contemporary society, deconstructing and reconstructing it within the intertwined contexts of history, memory, and power.
At the heart of the exhibition lies the theme of the internalization and reversal of the "male gaze," challenging the traditional binary opposition in visual culture where men are subjects and women are objects. Through the artists' self-contemplation, the exhibition reveals a "reflexive gaze," exploring how men become objects under the dual gaze of themselves and others. This gaze is not merely visual but also social, cultural, and psychological, exposing the vulnerability and fluidity of male identity within the contexts of modernity and post-humanity.
The centerpiece of the exhibition is Sitting Man (1977), a rare masterpiece by Philippine national treasure artist Ang Kiukok, from an important private collection in Taiwan. After years of obscurity, this solemn and profound work re-emerges, its silent yet profoundly moving presence akin to an unspeakable scar. The tense, introspective male figures in Ang Kiukok's work appear trapped in an invisible cage, their inner tension mirroring the exhibition's core question: How do men see themselves? How do they endure being seen? Under the layers of society, family, emotion, and memory, how is the male image deconstructed and reshaped from past paradigms?
This artistic history of self-contemplation can be traced back to the Renaissance, when self-portraits carried the lingering aura of power and glory, with artists asserting their social status through brushstrokes. By the time of Egon Schiele, however, self-portraiture had become a fervent dissection of the individual's inner world—bodies twisted, expressions torn, souls laid bare before the world. In In the Sight of Man, this tradition of self-examination is expanded by contemporary artists into more complex and intimate realms—they no longer merely depict their bodies but also the fractures and rebirths hidden deep within their hearts.
Roberto Gil de Montes infuses his male figures with the poetic essence of Latin American landscapes, as if softly chanting a lonely love song under the scorching sun. His colors and atmosphere profoundly influence Caleb Hahne Quintana, who transforms memories of his childhood in a cowboy family into warm, soft light and shadow, searching for the imprints of time in bodily postures. Viewed through a post-colonial lens, the works of Roberto Gil de Montes and Caleb Hahne Quintana explore how male identity in Latin American and Native North American cultures is redefined under the impact of globalization.
This dialogue between body and emotion appears in Zaam Arif's paintings, where delicate brushstrokes capture silent moments in private spaces, turning the quiet itself into an emotional release, murmuring stories of intimacy, estrangement, and self-identity. In these moments of gaze, time seems to collapse. In the works of Lenz Geerk and Melle Van Herwaadern, figures appear hidden from the clamor of their era, wooden and isolated, their forms and expressions exuding an almost metaphysical detachment. Their existence is not merely about individual beings but also a metaphor for a collective psyche—do people in the contemporary world all examine themselves in this way? Do they all bear unspeakable weights in silence?
The exhibition also expands the exploration of the "male gaze" to include mediums beyond painting. Buck Ellison uses photography to interpret the male image of the American white elite, revealing subtle insights into power, repression, and class consciousness beneath a seemingly flawless visual surface. His works do not merely reproduce but dismantle the cultural frameworks of "how men should be seen." Meanwhile, German artist Lukas Müller employs collage and layered imagery to explore the interplay of body, memory, and visual perception, constantly challenging the boundaries of viewing and blending personal experience with collective narratives to create an ambiguous and fluid way of seeing. Andrea Mauti from Rome adopts an almost archaeological perspective to examine how materials, stripped of their political and social meanings, still carry poetic and narrative potential. His works, straddling painting and sculpture, create a fantastical archaeological imagery where ancient ruins, technological remnants, and human and animal figures intertwine, constructing a visual experience that is both alien and familiar.
Yet the exhibition is not confined to silence and detachment; it also embraces wild vitality. Benji Grignon captures the intimate connection between himself and horses with vigorous brushstrokes that pulse with primal energy, releasing untamed souls onto the canvas. Lorenzo Silvestri, on the other hand, shouts in shades of blue, transforming neon-lit nights into a book of restless and passionate memories, as if etching the unease and desire of youth into the fabric of time.
From Ang Kiukok in the early 20th century to the ultra-contemporary artists of the 21st century, In the Sight of a Man weaves a timeless thread of vision, extracting the myriad states of the male psyche from diverse cultures and backgrounds. Within the curatorial framework of M+M Gallery, these works are not merely individual self-portraits but a collective deconstruction of the male image. The artists seek balance between silence and clamor, exploring the multiple dimensions of humanity through cross-cultural dialogue. They paint not just "men," but the variations of time, the loosening of identity, the poetry of love and hate, and the private yet universal landscapes of the inner self.
Before these paintings, we are not merely viewers but the viewed; we are not merely gazing but being pierced by the artists' gaze. In this exhibition, every stroke and every hue is a question to the self; art is not merely a depiction of the world but a questioning of the self. As we pause before these works, perhaps we may see our own reflections—seeing him, and also seeing ourselves.
In the Sight of a Man is not just an exhibition but an invitation—an invitation to confront the complexity of identity, to rethink the multiplicity of selfhood, to question the power dynamics of the gaze, to interrogate the narratives we inherit, and to find ourselves in the gaze of the other.
