Lily Stockman's 'A Grass Roof' Opens at MASSIMODECARLO Hong Kong

MASSIMODECARLO Hong Kong presents Lily Stockman's first exhibition in the city, 'A Grass Roof,' running until May 21, 2026. The title references the eighth-century poem 'Song of the Grass Roof Hermitage' by Zen master Shitou Xiqian, exploring the boundary between interior refuge and infinite expanse. Stockman's oil paintings collapse perspective through portals of color and permeable boundaries, with organic shapes that bloom and recede. The exhibition contrasts with her 2024 show at Le Corbusier's Maison La Roche in Paris, which engaged architecture as a 'machine for living'; here, painting is proposed as provisional architecture, like a thatched hut. Works include 'Cold Mountain' (2026), featuring vaporous soft blues and nesting green humps, borrowing its title from Brice Marden's zen calligraphy series, and 'Meadowlark,' where a pale celadon ground vibrates against an orange isosceles triangle referencing the Western Meadowlark's song frequencies. Stockman's technique uses fine badger and large horsehair brushes—implements of Chinese calligraphy—creating wobbling lines that record pressure and tremor. Her research spans Ni Zan's Yuan dynasty landscapes, sixth-century Buddhist ceiling frescoes of the Mogao caves, and Isabelle Tillerot's account of eighteenth-century European encounters with Chinese garden design. Each painting is described as having 'a window left open so that the room might fill with breeze,' offering recalibration amid Hong Kong's urban density.