Born in 1930 in Nashville, Tennessee, Robert Ryman’s early artistic calling was jazz. At 23, he moved to New York City to become a professional musician. To keep the lights on, he took a day job as a security guard at MoMA—Dan Flavin was a fellow guard—and this gave him time with the Abstract Expressionist works on the walls. Although he had no art training, Ryman was inspired to take up painting himself. And despite being labeled a minimalist, Ryman saw himself as more of a realist—the materials he used were in and of themselves the intended image, with no illusion or pretense. With a career-long focus on the color white, his paintings are intrinsically in dialogue with the space they inhabit and the exact moment in time that they’re being viewed. Ryman died in 2019, at 88, and this show in Hong Kong is the first solo presentation of his work in Greater China. —Spike Carter