PREVIEW: Cy Gavin
Cy Gavin’s paintings transmute subjective responses to specific places into expansive works with striking palettes and fluid, gestural brushwork. Composed in dimensions that are in keeping with the scale of experience, these paintings interpret the sites and processes of the natural world. Gavin’s paintings respond to the land as he finds it, which he endeavors to preserve and rewild.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Gagosian Archive
Cy Gavin presents a solo exhibition in Hong Kong, that is his debut exhibition in Asia in Hong Kong. Gavin interprets natural spaces and phenomena with varied mark making that echoes the complexity of the forces that shape the landscape. Depictions of biological, geological, and cosmic structures made with at-times vivid hues, this group of paintings foregrounds themes of growth and transfiguration. Many use unprimed wooden panels as supports, with the visible wood grain itself playing an important compositional role where it is left unpainted. The square format of many of the paintings lends itself to an open-ended range of visual exploration. Taking a macrocosmic view, “Untitled (Protostar)” (2025) envisions the birth of our sun as it emerged from a nebula through the accretion of matter at a vast scale. Several paintings show plants commonly found in the woodlands, prairies, and coasts of North America, including aquatic marsh marigolds and eastern prickly pear cacti. “Untitled (Maximilian sunflower)” (2024), the exhibition’s largest work, depicts at life size a tall, profusely flowering plant which is heliotropic, following the sun’s motion. “Untitled (Tide pool)” (2025) and “Untitled (Mussels)” (2024), describe dynamic intertidal microhabitats affected by the moon. Other works are concerned with processes of disintegration and regeneration. “Untitled (Windsnap)” (2024) represents a dead tree broken by the wind, while “Untitled (Landslide)” (2024) pictures a heap of boulders that have cleaved from a rock face and fallen into a desert canyon, counterposed with the orb of the rising moon. “Untitled (Nurse log)” (2024) visualizes the roots and trunk of an eastern hemlock tree that has sprung with robust growth from the fallen trunk of its dead predecessor, highlighting a key phenomenon in the life cycle of the forest. Recalling perceptions of a specific moment and place, “Untitled” (2025) portrays a pond illuminated in warm tones by a bright summer moon and surrounded by a deep blue nocturnal expanse, with standing water reeds painted in loose calligraphic brushstrokes. “Untitled (Aquarium)” (2025) is based on the artificial habitat of a viewing tank that houses dolphins at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, Maryland. Another set of paintings investigates the radial, spiraling structures of spiderwebs, their linear strands defined by Gavin’s painted demarcation of the negative space between them.
Photo: Cy Gavin, Untitled (Marsh marigolds), 2025, Acrylic and vinyl on wood, 60 3/4 x 60 3/4 x 2 3/4 inches (154.3 x 154.3 x 7 cm), © Cy Gavin, Photo: Maris Hutchinson, Courtesy Gagosian
Info: Gagosian Gallery, 7/F Pedder Building, 12 Pedder Street, Central, Hong Kong, Duration: 22/5-2/8/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, https://gagosian.com/
