Li Hei Di: Tongues of Flare

EVENT DESCRIPTION

Pace is pleased to present Tongues of Flare, an exhibition of new paintings and sculpture by Li Hei Di, at its Hong Kong gallery. On view from May 29 to August 29, this presentation marks Li’s first solo show with Pace since they joined the gallery’s program in 2024.

The artist’s exhibition will spotlight 11 new, never-before-exhibited paintings produced in 2025. Meditating on self-discovery and enactments of physical and spiritual transformation, these works imagine the body as an architecture of energies and feelings—a space where chaos, love, passion, and other phenomena converge and collide. These layered compositions, where spectral figures reveal and obscure themselves at different moments, speak to the complexities of selfhood and the conflicts between our internal selves and forces of the external world.

Following its run at Pace in Hong Kong, Tongues of Flare will travel to the Pond Society during Shanghai Art Week in the fall.

ABOUT THE ARTIST / ORGANISER

Born in Shenyang, China in 1997, Li, who currently lives and works in London, is known for their explorations of human embodiment, displacement, and intimacy in luminous paintings that blend abstraction and figuration. In their vibrant, dreamlike canvases—where ghostly, translucent bodies and body parts pulsate in and out of view amid abstract forms and washes of color—Li embeds latent narratives about gender, repressed and fulfilled desire, and emotional fluidity for viewers to uncover and decipher. Primarily a painter, they also work across sculpture and performance, mediums that complement their otherworldly canvases.