On the subject of relating, Hong Kong’s 3812 Gallery is celebrating its tenth anniversary (and a new gallery space in Wyndham Place) with a two-part exhibition (running from May to July) titled After Nature and staging conversations between a series of Chinese and British artists, each of whom explores the relationships between nature and abstraction. Part 1 places the work of Hong Kong-born architect and artist Raymond Fung Wing Kee alongside British Abstract Expressionist painter Albert Irvin and the Chinese abstractionist Li Lei in a juxtaposition that situates the landscapes of Hong Kong (Fung) alongside urban abstractions (Irvin) and mental landscapes (Li) in order to explore dialogues between Western and Eastern aesthetics and a range of conceptualisations of abstraction. The series as a whole seeks to pose questions about the relationship between humans and nature and the nature of artistic influence and dialogue at a time when international relations, because of both pandemics and politics, seem to be increasingly abstract concepts in their own right.
