Join us for a conversation between Peter Pakesch, curator and chairman of the Maria Lassnig Foundation, and John Tain, art Historian and curator, on the occasion of 'Self with Dragon'—Maria Lassnig's first solo exhibition in Hong Kong at Hauser & Wirth.

The conversation will take place in the exhibition, followed by the opening reception from 6 – 8 pm.

This event is free, but reservations are recommended. Please register here.

About Peter Pakesch

Peter Pakesch, born 1955 in Graz, studied architecture at the TU Graz. He worked as an artist and curated his first exhibitions for the Forum Stadtpark and the Steirischer Herbst festival in Graz between 1976 and 1979. In 1980 he spent a period of study in New York, where he worked on various projects. From 1981 to 1993 he ran the Galerie Peter Pakesch in Vienna. In 1985 he founded the Grazer Kunstverein and organized several large exhibitions for the Steirischer Herbst. Between 1993 and 1995 he worked on projects for the National Gallery in Prague. From 1996 to 2003 he was director of the Kunsthalle Basel. Between 2003 and 2015 he was artistic director of the Universalmuseum Joanneum and founding director of Kunsthaus Graz. Since 2015 he has been chairman of the Maria Lassnig Foundation in Vienna.

About John Tain

John Tain is an art historian and curator. In 2023 – 2024, he curated ‘Of Mountains and Seas’, Lahore Biennale 03. He previously was based in Hong Kong as Head of Research at Asia Art Archive (2017–2023). His projects there include 'Expansions, Translations,' for documenta fifteen (2022); the Art Schools of Asia seminar and symposium (2021–22); the exhibition Crafting Communities (2020), devoted to Thailand-based Womanifesto; MAHASSA (Modern Art Histories in and across Africa, and South and Southeast Asia, 2019-2020), a collaboration with the Dhaka Art Summit and the Institute for Comparative Modernities at Cornell University; as well as the Guerrilla Girls first commission in Asia (2018). He has served as a series editor for Afterall’s Exhibition Histories, and is a co-editor for the Intersecting Modernisms project, with Pamela Corey, Iftikhar Dadi, Salah Hassan, Mari-Carmen Ramirez, and Ming Tiampo. He also serves as an advisor for Asia Forum, an ongoing collateral event at the Venice Biennale, and on the advisory committee of the Hauser & Wirth Institute. He was previously a curator for modern and contemporary collections at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles (2007–2017).

About the exhibition

The oeuvre of the seminal painter Maria Lassnig (1919 – 2014) covers more than 70 years of intense work between the end of the Second World War and her death in 2014. At the center of her profound research into painting is a unique interest in the relation between awareness and the human body—particularly the artist’s body—which Lassnig termed ‘body awareness.’ Titled ‘Self with Dragon,’ this is Lassnig’s first solo exhibition in Hong Kong. Presenting a selection of paintings and works on paper from 1987 to 2008, the show provides an insight into Lassnig’s approach, how she questions perception beyond the visual, how our body senses as a whole and the ways in which language becomes part of such perceptions.