GROUP EXHIBITION

AS THE GROUND HOLDS Villepin 21 May–8 August 2026 Hong Kong

Press Release

VILLEPIN is pleased to present As the Ground Holds , a focused exhibition bringing together works by Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita, Zenzaburō Kojima, Lê Phổ, and Mai Trung Thứ—four artists who made Paris their home at a moment when the city stood at the forefront of modernism. This presentation marks Zenzaburō Kojima’s debut in a Hong Kong gallery, reuniting his work with that of his peers within migrant artist circles in Paris.

“There is a special poignancy in reuniting Lê Phổ and Mai Trung Thứ, who journeyed from Vietnam to France together in 1937; Kojima and Foujita, Japanese compatriots navigating the École de Paris in the 1920s; and Lê Phổ and Foujita, who exhibited together in the late 1950s. Almost a century later, As the Ground Holds weaves together the unseen networks of migrant artists in Paris, allowing them to speak to a new era. In a time shaped by displacement, these artists show us how to hold onto a world within which we can no longer live, while feeling new ground beneath our feet.”

Rishika Assomull, Senior Director of VILLEPIN

Moving through Paris’s studios, salons and debates, each absorbed what was generative while remaining, at the deepest level, themselves. What emerged was not an imitation of modernism, but a contribution to its global vernacular—one that quietly redefined what painting could hold and what forms of existence it might make visible.

As the Ground Holds traces how these Japanese and Vietnamese artists, working across shared networks in Paris, developed a form of modern painting rooted in tradition, material and continuity rather than rupture. At a time when the boundaries of modernism were actively contested, they entered the city not as followers but as independent thinkers, shaping their practices within overlapping émigré communities. While Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita became one of the most distinctive figures of the École de Paris, Zenzaburō Kojima’s time there proved equally formative. Upon returning to Japan, Kojima played a pivotal role in the development of modern Japanese oil painting, shaping new artistic movements and philosophies that redefined the relationship between Western technique and traditional Japanese aesthetic.

Each artist arrived in Paris with traditions already deeply formed. Techniques, materials and disciplines carried from elsewhere were not relinquished but sustained as sources of renewal. For Lê Phổ and Mai Trung Thứ, this grounding is evident in their use of silk, where light is absorbed rather than reflected, and memory is held with quiet precision. Their compositions allow figures, interiors and landscapes to emerge with restraint and intimacy. Here, surface is not decorative—it is a position on stability, on how an image remains present through time.

Ahead of their time, they articulated ideas about painting that would gain further recognition decades later. Their works demonstrate how memory, material and identity can travel, evolve, and still remain whole.

Through this exhibition, VILLEPIN brings these artists into renewed conversation, reuniting Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita, Zenzaburō Kojima, Lê Phổ and Mai Trung Thứ within a shared history shaped by movement, influence and independence.