Water Margin: Alessandro Twombly Solo Exhibition
M+M Gallery is pleased to present Water Margin: Alessandro Twombly Solo Exhibition, marking the artist’s first solo presentation in Asia, featuring eight newly created works conceived specifically for Hong Kong and the region. The exhibition title, Water Margin, draws inspiration from Water Margin (Shui Hu Zhuan), one of China’s Four Great Classical Novels, which chronicles the legendary exploits of 108 outlaws of Liangshan who rise against injustice during the Song Dynasty. The “water margin” is the edge of water, the limit of order, and the birthplace of wild energy. Twombly’s canvases function as such a margin—where pigment escapes the bondage of representation, and brushstrokes become autonomous acts of life, guided by the principles of nature rather than human reason. “I don’t want to control the paint; I let it find its own place,” the artist explains.[1]
Twombly’s painting is not about creating images but about the respiration and deposition of energy. His color palette favors tones close to nature—ochres, verdant greens, muted grays, and earthy yellows—reminiscent of both the earth and the human body. These colors are not mere decoration; they resonate emotionally. In works such as Peony Tower and Triumph of Peonies, Twombly employs the language of nature to evoke life energy that erupts after suppression—nature’s fury, signaling rebirth. The peonies in these paintings grow from silent, tower-like forms to fully triumphant blooms, mirroring the fate of the heroes of Water Margin: individuals driven to action, gathering as a collective to restore justice. Twombly’s peonies are not delicate flowers but living entities of latent power, surging and roaring on deep-green terrain, like people compelled by historical forces, breaking free from constraints, asserting dignity. This transformation—from suppression to eruption, from silence to triumph—is both a natural cycle and a metaphor for human existence. Whether the blossoming of a flower or the uprising of Liangshan’s outlaws, it stems from life’s instinctive response to injustice—a reverberation of existence seeking equilibrium.
Twombly’s brushwork is akin to the force of Lu Zhishen’s fists—never wielded for victory, but moving with qi; never crafted as technique, but emerging from the instinct of life. “When I paint, I am not creating images, but conversing with air, pigment, and canvas. It is a rhythm of existence itself,” he says. Works such as Dragon and Orient demonstrate this vigorous presence: the flowers in these paintings rise like dragons, monumental and alive. They are not static objects but flows of energy, the cadence of breath between heaven and earth—the flowers’ forms in the painting become embodiments of qi, representing a generative force beyond human intervention. This “qi” threads through his oeuvre—from the galloping energy of Dragon, to the blossoming of Peony Tower, and the triumph of Triumph of Peonies—tracing a trajectory of latent, accumulated, and eruptive life force. This rhythm resonates with the fate of the Liangshan heroes in Water Margin: from oppressed silence to collective awakening, and finally to righteous rebellion, as a natural counterforce to oppression. Twombly’s canvases thus function as Eastern allegories: using the vocabulary of nature to narrate human struggle, employing floral gestures to depict the circulation of qi.
Each of Twombly’s paintings is an articulation of life itself. In Planet Flute and Screaming, single plants stand quietly on nearly pristine, pale canvases, gazing upward toward the sky. Their branches and buds trace the networks of life, containing latent energy and rhythm within stillness. A clear blue-green stem dances lightly across the surface alongside grey shadows, while ash-blue blossoms at its tips are at once somber and vital, as if whispering the dialectic between life and extinction. This tension of opposition and coexistence evokes the roar of the Qiantang River tide heard by Lu Zhishen in his final moments: a force of nature reminding one of the self’s essential presence.
After layers of coverage, erasure, and the accumulation of time, Twombly’s canvases achieve a state of serene fulfillment. The shimmering colors and trembling brushstrokes are no longer marks of the artist, but a symphony of nature, existence, time, and life. Just as Lu Zhishen becomes one with the tidal roar, Twombly becomes a conduit on the canvas—seeking no outcome, only the truth of the present moment. In front of his works, viewers may resonate with this authenticity, sensing the pulse of life, time, and nature, listening to the deepest breaths of the canvas, and witnessing how pigment, qi, and rhythm articulate nature, humanity, and the most genuine presence—concerned not with results, but with the reality of the now.
[1] Richard Milazzo, Alessandro Twombly: Raging, Raging Against the Dying of the Light (2025)
