Leo Gallery Shanghai｜Max Huckle｜Under the Sun, Beneath the Rain

Leo Gallery is pleased to present Under the Sun, Beneath the Rain, a solo exhibition by German artist Max Huckle. The exhibition features paintings that refine a minimal visual language into a highly attentive practice: thin strata of color, measured intervals, and incisive linear gestures. What appears restrained is in fact exacting-each mark calibrated for how it shifts balance, tempo, and attention across the surface.

"Sun" and "rain" function as working terms, pointing to changing conditions of making-dryness and glare versus saturation and drag. Earlier layers remain active as pressure, gloss, and residue, shaping how the surface is read even when traces nearly disappear. Rather than aiming for a conclusive image, the works sustain a state of provisional resolution: held, tested, and slightly unsettled.

Huckle's approach also aligns with the logic of Guy Debord's dérive - a practice of drifting through an environment with heightened receptivity, guided by atmospheres, thresholds, and chance encounters rather than fixed destination. In painting, this belief becomes method: decisions are made in motion, responsive to what the work "offers" in the moment. The canvas operates like a terrain to be traversed-where direction can change, where detours matter, and where orientation emerges from the act itself.

Material decisions are integral. Huckle works exclusively with self-made pigment sticks, producing a palette in which every color is unique. These hues reflect his time in China not as representation, but as tonal experience-an environmental register translated into color and touch. Under the Sun, Beneath the Rain invites close looking: not for message, but for how a painting thinks-through drift, restraint, and the weight of the smallest shift.