Spencer Sweeney

Gagosian is pleased to announce Paint, an exhibition of new paintings by Spencer Sweeney opening at the Hong Kong gallery on November 19, 2025. These imposing works—oil portraits of seated figures with visible torsos, and others in which only the subjects’ heads and shoulders are depicted—convey intense energy and feeling through Sweeney’s use of rich color and bold paint handling.

Sweeney cites jazz as having sparked his love for improvisation, which he interweaves with references to pop culture and art history in nudes, portraits, and self-portraits. Resonating with the spirits of artists from Henri Matisse to Giorgio de Chirico and American painter Bob Thompson, his images embody a Neo-Expressionist verve while repeating signature motifs, and are characterized by their juxtaposition of direct emotional appeal with a freewheeling exploration of the creative process. In a complement to his painting practice, Sweeney transforms gallery spaces into studios and stages, conjuring dynamic “atmospheres” in conjunction with figures from various disciplines, including Lizzi Bougatsos, with whom he cofounded the New York noise-art group Actress.

The bodies of work that make up Paint originated in Sweeney’s seated portrait drawings of Bougatsos, images that subsequently reminded him of an earlier drawing he had made after a work on paper by Matisse. The perceived correspondence between these depictions led the artist to produce figure paintings. Canvases such as Sentient Painting (2025) are characterized—despite their lively palette—by a subtly melancholic tone that evokes the act of waiting. This mood, suggested in part by the sitters’ head-in-hand poses, is consistent with an understanding of painting as a practice that remains inherently demanding of time and patience—a desirable attribute in the age of instant visual generation (and corresponding knee-jerk reaction).