First solo exhibition in Hong Kong of ‘rainbow artist’ Ay-O’s work

Hong Kong will feel the full impact of Ay-O’s sense-stimulating creations when the M+ museum of visual culture hosts “Ay-O: Hong Hong Hong” from December 15 to May 5, the first solo exhibition of the artist’s works in the city.

“I hope the exhibition will resonate with a global audience, raising questions about traditional ways of seeing and stimulating simple joy through the work’s bursting colours,” says M+ director Suhanya Raffel.

The exhibition at the museum in the West Kowloon Cultural District also launches its Pao-Watari Exhibition Series.

The goal of the series is to shine an overdue light on figures and moments in the history of art and visual culture in Asia.

Raffel says Ay-O – whose work goes beyond the canvas to include prints, sculptures and installations – is the ideal subject to launch the series.

“The curious and ebullient spirit that defines Ay-O’s life and work is the perfect beginning to the new M+ series on significant and yet understudied figures and movements in Asian art history,” she says.

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Born in 1931 as Takao Iijima, Ay-O moved to New York in 1958, where he fell in with the Fluxus crowd, an avant-garde creative movement that challenged traditional norms and rebelled against the commercial art market.

Powered by its philosophy that art is for all, Fluxus comprised artists from around the globe, including his friend Yoko Ono.

The exhibition at M+ not only features almost 60 works by Ay-O from the 1950s to the 2000s, but a selection of works by his Fluxus counterparts.

The first part comprises Ay-O’s early works capturing Japan’s post-war reconstruction period, including Finger Box, his most notable contribution to Fluxus.

His signature rainbow patterns, which reflect his belief in the accessibility of art, feature in the second part of the exhibition.

Doryun Chong, deputy director, curatorial, and chief curator, M+, says, Ay-O’s art is proof that experimentalism can coexist with humour and sensorial pleasure.

“His rainbow motif has spread over numerous canvases, prints, objects and environments over more than six decades, demonstrating his indefatigable spirit of optimism and universalism,” says Chong.

“Our focused retrospective on his career demonstrates how the Asian avant-garde has contributed to and interacted in a global, cosmopolitan space.”

“Ay-O: Hong Hong Hong,” M+, West Kowloon Cultural District, December 15 to May 5.