Art Basel Hong Kong 2026: Ma Kelu: Free Fall

Leo Gallery is honored to present Free Fall, a solo project by artist Ma Kelu at Art Basel Hong Kong 2026. This exhibition features the artist’s recent Ada series—representing a breakthrough in his painterly language—alongside plein air works from the 1970s that marked formative moments in his early career. Together, they form a cross-temporal dialogue that spans nearly half a century.

As one of the founding members of the No Name Group (無名畫會), a pioneering avant-garde collective in 1970s China, Ma Kelu came of age amid the political and cultural upheavals of the twentieth century. From early plein air landscapes to later explorations in abstraction; from travels across Europe to his years in New York, and ultimately his return to China in the new millennium, Ma has forged a fiercely independent artistic path—one that resists official aesthetics while embracing a global perspective and an unrelenting spirit of inquiry.

Initiated in 2016, the Ada series marks a radical “free fall” from established artistic paradigms. Named after Bruce Lee’s defiant battle cry, Ada signals a sudden rupture with habitual modes of making and a conscious leap into the unknown. In this series, Ma deliberately abandons narrative structures, compositional logic, surface modulation, and formal aesthetics. No longer tethered to theory, painting becomes an intuitive response of the body, a channel for spirit, and a release of raw energy. Such a gesture of letting go is not a lapse, but a deliberate act by an artist who, after more than fifty years of practice, elects to loosen his grip and embrace the indeterminacy of what lies beyond.

Stamping, brushing, smudging, and pouring constitute the foundational syntax of these works. Materials and gestures unfold organically with the artist’s state of being, no longer governed by visual order or aesthetic convention. Yet this “free fall” is not a spontaneous rupture, but the culmination of decades of artistic cultivation and rigorous discipline. The brushwork—imbued with the rhythm of classical Chinese painting—echoes the legacy of Song and Yuan landscapes, the literati spirit of Bada Shanren (八大山人), and the embodied memory formed through Ma’s long-term copying of Wen Fu (The Rhapsody on Literature, 《陸機文賦》) by Lu Ji, repeated across one hundred scrolls. His exuberant, untamed use of color can be traced to the Impressionist-inflected plein air practice of the early 1970s, marked by a heightened sensitivity to the moods of nature. From the influence of American Abstract Expressionism to deep engagement with Chinese calligraphy, painting, and philosophy; from reflections on cultural identity to responses to historical and social conditions—these elements form the unseen architecture of Ada, resonating not as image, but as energy within the painting.

Ma Kelu has remarked, “There is nothing on the canvas.” This “nothingness” is not emptiness, but a conscious renunciation—a refusal to cater to external expectations, and an insistence on painting in an era when “there is no image left to paint.” In this sense, Ada eschews symbolic figuration and resists the constructed logic of abstraction. It is closer to a state of writing—emerging without preconception, generated through spontaneity, instinct, and immediacy. Here, painting no longer moves toward a predetermined outcome, but instead reveals its essence through the very act of becoming. This purposeless mode of creation quietly echoes the Daoist concept of “wuwei” (無為)—non-action or effortless action—and marks the artist’s return, in the maturity of his years, to the original impulse of creation.

Thus, Free Fall is not a metaphor for descent, but a path toward liberation: a release from the pull of systems, a shedding of the burdens of meaning, and a reclamation of significance through letting go. Ada is both a light, unburdened leap in the long arc of Ma Kelu’s artistic journey, and a spiritual arrival—an ascent from craft to Dao, a resolute return to the essence of life and painting after all structures have been stripped away.