ABOUT THIS
2026.11.12 - 2026.11.15
2026.11.10 (14:00 - 19:00) / 2026.11.11 (12:00 - 18:00)
West Bund Art Center, 2555 Longteng Ave., Xuhui District, Shanghai
2D01
The relationship between art and nature is one of the oldest questions in aesthetics. From Plato's theory of mimesis to the empty spaces of Song dynasty landscape painting, we find different civilizations grappling with the same core concern. But today, "representing" nature is no longer just a theoretical debate—it has become an urgent, lived question. Surrounded as we are by simulacra and digital projections, those rare moments when we actually touch and feel the natural world: have they become a quiet act of resistance? This exhibition reimagines the performance. Five artists, five ways of engaging with nature—together, they stage a collective rehearsal.
We begin by venturing from the city into the countryside, in search of nature as commonly perceived. Lau Kam Hung adopts the observational mode of Song Dynasty literati, tracing the vestiges of classical landscape. Imagining himself as a scholar of a bygone era, he contemplates how to inscribe emotional resonance upon this land and leave behind enduring traces of sentiment. We then follow Tobe Kan back into the urban realm, where she turns her gaze toward nature designed for greening, a form of life disciplined by order. Within prescribed confines, plants nevertheless assert their will to choose and persist, preserving a flicker of wildness at the margins of regulation.
Thereafter, our awareness gradually sinks into the very vessels of vegetation. Genie Hui beckons us into a phantasmagoria of natural ecology, a banquet staged as if beneath the vault of heaven. Cells drift weightless through colour, moving with a primal exuberance, as though life has never been fettered by meaning. Awakening from this reverie, we return to the city, now woven with electronic signals. Lam Yau Sum reminds us that nature's forms can be re-summoned through material transmutation. Electrical cables proliferate like neural networks—slender yet sensitive, rigid yet sinuous—weaving an alternative organic order within quotidian spaces.
At the terminus of our journey, we stand before stones of immemorial age. Yuko Fukuba Johnsson murmurs: stones never utter a word, yet they bear witness to all. And each of us assumes a role within nature; as spectator, interpreter, custodian of memory, and conduit of life force. Following these five rehearsals, we are compelled to ask: If "nature" has always been a cultural construct and a projection of human emotion, then what confronts us today. Is it nature in itself, or our habitual modes of perception and the narratives they carry? Each artist, in their own idiom, participates in nature's renewed articulation. And the act of viewing, undertaken by the audience, constitutes the final fragment of this rehearsal. Through the interweaving of these gazes, "nature" returns to our midst. Perhaps nature never departed—it has only transformed the language of its presence.
Written and curated by Shirky Chan
ARTWORKS
About the artists
Genie Hui (b. 1999) graduated from the Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University in 2023 with a Bachelor of Arts in Visual Arts, and currently lives and works in Hong Kong. By infusing vibrant colors and fantastical, splendid imagery, she endows traditional mediums such as ink on paper and ceramics with a contemporary feel. Her works invite viewers to contemplate the flow of energy and the process of creation. Through delicate brushstrokes and clay-shaped landscapes that evoke a uncanny, corporeal presence along with fantastical compositions, she presents the intimate interconnections and infinite possibilities of all things in the universe.
Yuko Fukuba Johnsson (b. 1973) is a Japanese ceramic artist currently based in Hong Kong who creates "Memory Containers" to encapsulate moments of personal and collective memory. Born in Tokyo, Fukuba earned a Bachelor's degree in Photography in her early career, subsequently working as an advertising creative at multinational agencies for twenty years before relocating to Hong Kong in 2013. In 2020, she pivoted to contemporary ceramic art, enrolling in the Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) program co-presented by RMIT University and the Hong Kong Art School. Fascinated by ceramics as a symbolic, vessel-like medium, she combines its unique materiality with conceptual approaches to deeply explore how this ancient craft can hold beliefs, wishes, and intangible emotions while containing physical objects.
Tobe Kan (b. 1984) currently lives and works in Hong Kong. She obtained a Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) degree co-presented by RMIT University and the Hong Kong Art School in 2017. In recent years, during her casual walks and wanderings, she has focused on observing various plants that naturally coexist with humans. Her current artistic practice investigates themes of liminality and impermanence, dissecting feelings of insecurity, alienation, and being forgotten, while delving into concepts of existence, distance, and identity. Her works seek to reveal the uncanny and mysterious sensations of wandering between being half-asleep and half-awake, dream and reality. She frequently experiments through painting, drawing, and installation art. Her works have been exhibited in Hong Kong, Dallas, Taipei, Seoul, Cambridge, and beyond, and are widely held in institutional and private collections.
Lau Kam Hung (b. 1988) graduated from RMIT University in 2014 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2016. The ways in which Chinese literati painting engages with and processes shan shui (landscape) have always deeply fascinated Lau. His research into literati landscape painting led him to realize that what makes this genre unique is by no means limited to the medium or tools, but lies more importantly in its unique perspective on nature and its profound exploration of the subject-object relationship. Within the history of Chinese painting, works from the Song and Yuan dynasties intrigue him the most. They not only embody the mature evolution and rich heritage of Chinese painting, but also exquisitely convey human perceptions of the relationship between oneself and all creation through visual contrasts—such as large and small, near and far, motion and stillness, heavy and light, dense and sparse, fast and slow, complex and simple, known and unknown, rational and emotional, as well as ideal and real. He consistently strives to express this core essence across all of his artistic creations.
Lam Yau Sum (b. 1981) graduated from RMIT University in 2010 with a degree in Fine Art. He has participated in numerous local and international exhibitions, showing at major art fairs and institutions including Yunsan Fan Art Museum in Taiwan, HE Art Museum in Foshan, China, Art Basel Hong Kong, Art Taipei, Art Asia Miami, Fine Art Asia, and Ink Asia. His works are widely acclaimed in the contemporary art community and held in private, corporate, and public museum collections, including the Vancouver Art Gallery in Canada (2025), the Hong Kong Museum of Art (2019), the Copelouzos Family Art Museum in Greece (2018), and the MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum in Thailand (2017). He was awarded the "New Trend" award in Hong Kong in 2010. His series Yuan, Tree Tower, and Metal Tree were selected for the major exhibition "CHINA8 – Zeitgenössische Kunst aus China an Rhein und Ruhr" and presented at the Osthaus Museum Hagen in Germany.
