HdM Gallery is delighted to present Masks Fall Gently, the first solo exhibition in China of American artist Piper Bangs. In this exhibition, the artist unfolds a trio of conceptual structures—stage, actors, and light through supple brushwork, intricate spatial construction, and sensually charged objects, with the “mask” serving as a central metaphor threading through the entire body of work.
Piper Bangs’ practice is grounded in a deep study of 19th-century academic painting techniques, Rococo ornamentation, and the luminous structures of the Dutch Golden Age. Yet beyond this lineage, she turns toward reflections on contemporary visual culture, personal experience, and the accelerated conditions of the present.In her imagery, the mask functions not merely as a tool of concealment, but as an index of what is revealed when layers of perception slowly fall away. From thick impasto and sculptural strokes to the recurring motif of the pear, Bangs constructs a visual continuum that oscillates between humor and gravity, body and material, stillness and motion, sensuality and narrative.