Roberta Smith reviews No Limits: Zao Wou-Ki at Asia Society, New York, on view through January 8, 2017.

Smith writes: “It is an intriguing, peripatetic, at times beautiful affair of 60 works from 1943 to 2003, with paintings on canvas and paper, watercolors and several kinds of prints. Yet Zao slips through your fingers, running hot then cold, refusing to settle down. He had an amazing facility. Even when you don’t especially like a painting, you may find yourself stuck in front of it wondering, How did he do that?… Zao comes across here as an artist who brought an Asian element to Abstract Expressionism — a style already indebted to Asian art — in a reverse cross-fertilization similar to that of the Japanese Gutai group.”