Indian-born artist Natvar Bhavsar is widely acclaimed for his sublime pure-pigment paintings. Following exhibitions at the 2009 Venice Biennale and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, Bhavsar unveils new work for his first solo exhibition in Hong Kong. Bhavsar came to prominence in the West, where he has lived and worked for more than 40 years. RANG, the artist's debut exhibition in East Asia, features a series of monumental Color Field paintings. Cloud-like in composition, the works evoke constellations, shifting vapors and the outer reaches of space. They are sensuous expanses of color that refuse boundaries of shape or line. Instead, they appear to be luminous atmospheres or energy fields.

Bhavsar works like a Tibetan mandala painter. He begins by laying the canvas on the ground and soaking it with a clear acrylic binder. He then releases dry pigment granules in layers forming radiant fields of color. Dictated by the subtle gestures and movements of his body, the color dust settles onto the surface in intricate patterns. Bhavsar draws inspiration from the Indian spring festival Holi—a celebration of color in which people throw bright pigment powders on each other. Another key influence on his work is the traditional Indian art form of rangoli, where pigment powder, flour, sand, colorful spices or chalk dust are used to create auspicious imagery, typically on the floor.

Bhavsar has devoted his career to the exploration of color. He was one of the early denizens of SoHo, the center of the art world in New York City, where he has lived and worked for more than a generation. In 1965, Bhavsar was recognized with a John D. Rockefeller Grant, which launched him into the New York art world. He interacted closely with such artistic luminaries as Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, and Clyfford Still. An influential member of the New York School of Colorists, he was one of the first artists to introduce thrown and sifted dry pigment into painting.

Natvar Bhavsar's works are in more than 800 public and private collections across the globe, including those of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Boston Museum of Fine Art; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. In 2008, Skira, the leading Italian art publisher, released a monograph on Bhavsar for worldwide distribution.