The show Beyond Image at the Museum of Art shows the large-format work of a man who is apparently one of France's best-known abstract artists.
It is intended to encourage a spiritual response, yet the first reaction of many in Hong Kong is likely to be 'Olivier who?'.
The show looks good - most of the canvases are very large and very bright. But in many ways it seems strange to hold such a show in the space that previously has held shows of Chagal, Miro and Zao Wou-ki.
The catalogue includes statements that Olivier Debre is 'by no means unfamiliar' to Hong Kong on the strength of the yellow and red stage curtain at the Cultural Centre. But that is not the variety of 'well-known' that will have audiences flocking.
This French May show is a retrospective - a looking back - without there having been much looking forward. And there is, or certainly should be, a fear that Hong Kong museum-goers will have difficulty finding a context for this show.
Debre, 77, has, it seems, only recently been rediscovered by his own country. A show - the same collection we see here - at the Jeu de Paume in Paris in 1995 revived interest in an artist whom critics agreed had not been taken into account as fully as he deserved.