British artist Alexander James is returning to one of modern art’s most persistent questions with Dissecting the Square, an exhibition at Phillips Gallery in Hong Kong. Bringing together a bold new body of work spanning painting, sculpture and ideas of form itself, the exhibition asks what possibilities still remain within one of art’s most fundamental shapes.
Running until 31st May, the exhibition takes its title from an unexpected moment in James’s studio. One morning a shaft of sunlight moved across an empty canvas, appearing, in the artist’s words, to be “literally dissecting the square.” That fleeting visual incident became the conceptual starting point for an entire series in which the square transforms from a stable structure into something more fluid, fragmented and psychologically charged.
A graduate of Camberwell College of Arts, James has developed an interdisciplinary practice that spans painting, sculpture, installation and video. Across these new works, he repeatedly divides the canvas into four equal quadrants, creating compositions in which individual sections can function independently while also remaining part of a larger whole. The resulting works occupy a space between order and disruption, exploring the tension between fragmentation and unity.
James describes the making process as “a marathon of lots of little sprints”, beginning with notebook sketches and handwritten fragments before developing into a more physical and instinctive process in the studio.
The exhibition also places James’s work within a wider art historical conversation. Josef Albers’ Homage to the Square: In Time (1967), on loan from a private collection, acts as an important point of reference. While Albers approached the square as a site of optical precision and formal investigation, James pushes the form toward something more emotional and psychologically unstable.
A sculpture by Sean Scully further extends this dialogue into three-dimensional space. Long associated with rhythmic bands and blocks of colour, Scully’s work reinforces questions around structure, mass and repetition that run throughout the exhibition.
The presence of other artists can also be felt beneath the surface. Echoes of Mark Rothko, Donald Judd, Frank Stella and Kazimir Malevich appear throughout the exhibition’s formal language. Yet James moves beyond strict abstraction, allowing partially formed faces, figures and traces of memory to emerge from geometric frameworks.
Rather than treating the square as a solved problem, Dissecting the Square reopens it. The exhibition proposes that even within painting’s most elemental structure, there are still new territories to discover.
Alexander James, Dissecting the Square, presented by PHILLIPS X – 31st May, 2026, Phillips Hong Kong
All Installation views Dissecting the Square. Colors and Black by Alexander James. Courtesy the artist & Phillips
About the artist
Alexander James (b. 1993) is a London-based painter whose large-scale canvases merge historical and contemporary moments in a vibrant dialogue of pastel and electric hues. In his recent work, the canvas becomes a personal diary—an intimate space where fragments of letters, photographs, memorabilia, and ancient artefacts intersect with conversations, memories, and generational echoes. James reimagines scenes from his everyday life as though they were cinematic stills, constructing a nonlinear narrative that resists fixed temporality. These painted diaries function as storyboards through which the artist explores identity, emotion, and the legacy of his ancestry.
Blurring the boundaries between the real and the imagined, James’s practice navigates the tension between the conscious and the unconscious. This is poignantly embodied in his depiction of his enigmatic great-grandfather: a figure rendered through dynamic mark-making, layered in warm tones, then deliberately obscured into abstraction. Through such gestures, James investigates the fragility of memory and the shifting contours of personal history.
James holds a BA in Illustration from Camberwell College of Arts and presented the solo exhibition Tuck Shop for The Wicked at Marlborough Gallery (2023). Prior to this, he featured in numerous group exhibitions, including The Clock of Dreams at the Victoria and Albert Museum and The SW Centre for Arts & Culture, Shenzhen (2025); exhibitions with Marquez Art Projects, Miami (2025/2026); Mack Art Foundation, Southampton Arts Centre, New York (2025); Spectrum at Hemmerle Contemporary & Mint, Munich (2025); Mirage at SK Foundation for Arts & Culture, UAE (2025); Gala at Dallas Contemporary (2024); Light of Winter at Perrotin, New York (2024); Wish at Almine Rech, London (2024); Face to Face: A Celebration of Portraiture at Marlborough Gallery (2023); Once Upon a Time in Mayfair at Phillips, London (2022); On the Outside Looking In at Room 57 Gallery, New York, and the Victoria & Albert Museum, Dundee (2022); Analogous at Daniel Benjamin Gallery (2022); Grand Opening at Super Zoom, Paris (2022); Love Is The Devil at Marlborough Gallery (2021); and BFAMI at Christie’s (2020). It’s Not Just a Portrait, Badr El Jundi Gallery Benhavis; I, Science at The Blyth Gallery at Imperial College (2017).
