RUTH ASAWA

Doing Is Living David Zwirner 19 November 2024–22 February 2025 Hong Kong

Press Release

David Zwirner is pleased to present the first solo exhibition of Ruth Asawa’s work in Greater China. Spanning five decades, the works in this exhibition—many of which have never before been displayed publicly—exemplify the various and complementary facets of Asawa’s prolific career.

In the spring of 2025, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art will present the first major national and international museum retrospective of Asawa’s work, organized in partnership with The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Premiering at SFMOMA from April 5 through September 2, 2025, this will be the first posthumous retrospective to feature the entire spectrum of the artist’s awe-inspiring practice. From 2025 through 2027 the exhibition will travel to The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain; and the Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, Switzerland. In October 2024, Asawa was awarded the National Medal of Arts, the United States government’s highest award given to artists and art patrons. Asawa is only the second visual artist to receive this high honor posthumously.

Selected Works

Untitled WC.263 Clivia by Ruth Asawa contemporary artwork works on paper

Ruth Asawa Untitled (WC.263, Clivia), c. c. 1984-1986 Watercolour on paper
61 x 45.7 cm
73.7 x 59.1 x3.8 cm (incl frame) David Zwirner Request Price & Availability

About the Artist

An influential sculptor, devoted activist, and tireless advocate for arts education, Ruth Asawa (1926-2013) is best known for her extensive body of hanging wire sculptures. Intricate, dynamic, and sinuous, these remarkable works, begun in the late 1940s, continue to challenge conventional notions of sculpture through their emphasis on lightness and transparency. Explaining her fascination with wire as a material, Asawa said, “I was interested in it because of the economy of a line, making something in space, enclosing it without blocking it out. It’s still transparent. I realized that if I was going to make these forms, which interlock and interweave, it can only be done with a line because a line can go anywhere.”¹

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Also Exhibiting at David Zwirner

All Exhibitions

MICHAËL BORREMANS French Painting David Zwirner 5 June–22 July 2026 Paris

STEVEN SHEARER My Moody Muse David Zwirner 4 June–31 July 2026 London

GROUP EXHIBITION California Light and Space (The 21st Century Version) David Zwirner 4 June–1 August 2026 Los Angeles

DAN FLAVIN Grids David Zwirner 28 May–8 August 2026 Hong Kong

About the Gallery

Since opening its doors in 1993, David Zwirner has been home to innovative, singular, and pioneering exhibitions across a variety of media and genres. The gallery has helped foster the careers of some of the most influential artists working today, and has maintained long-term representation of a wide-ranging, international group of artists and estates. Based in New York with spaces in Chelsea and the Upper East Side, David Zwirner expanded to Europe in 2012 with a gallery in an eighteenth-century Georgian townhouse in London’s Mayfair district, and opened its first gallery in Asia in January 2018 in Central Hong Kong.

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5-6/F, H Queen's
80 Queen's Road Central
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Hong Kong

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Tuesday – Saturday
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David Zwirner

5-6/F, H Queen's, 80 Queen's Road Central, Hong Kong, Hong Kong

+852 211 959 00
http://www.davidzwirner.com

Opening hours

Tuesday – Saturday
11am – 7pm

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The art world in focus

RUTH ASAWA

Installation Views

Selected Works

Also Exhibiting at David Zwirner