Hong Kong art exhibitions to catch this week

The famous Musée d’Orsay and Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris have collaborated with the Hong Kong Museum of Art to present this special exhibition on two of the greatest masters of the Impressionist art movement: Paul Cézanne and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.  This is the first large-scale exhibition of the two Impressionists in Hong Kong, showcasing 52 masterpieces on loan from France. See how the pair found innovative ways to reinvent the art of their time, how they viewed the world, and how they captured the rapidly changing times around them. Cézanne and Renoir were also longtime friends and likely influenced each other’s works, as well as later becoming beacons of inspiration for later painters such as Spanish surrealist master Pablo Picasso. The Cézanne and Renoir exhibition will run from January 17 to May 7. Tickets are priced at $50, with concessions available. Note that the Hong Kong Museum of Art is closed on Thursdays as well as the first two days of Chinese New Year (January 29-30). View this post on Instagram A post shared by Time Out Hong Kong (@timeouthk)

Tai Kwun’s InnerGlow is back for its fourth season, lighting up the historic Barrack Block with a stunning mix of traditional Chinese calligraphy and cutting-edge digital art. From now to Feb 14 from 6.30pm to 9.30pm, explore local new media artist Hung Keung’s Garden of Reflection, where Chinese characters bloom into colourful animations, and check out works by student artists in the Prison Yard through the InnerGlow Searchlight mentorship. It’s a fresh, creative take on heritage – perfect for ringing in the Year of the Snake.

The Hong Kong Palace Museum (HKPM) is currently holding a joint exhibition with the Palace of Versailles with approximately 150 magnificent pieces to peruse. This is the first time that treasures from the Forbidden City and the Palace of Versailles – both World Heritage Sites – will be featured in one exhibition in Hong Kong. With themes spanning culture, arts, science, technology, and beyond in the royal courts of France and China, visitors can expect to admire portraits, porcelain pieces, glassware, enamelware, textiles, books, scientific instruments, and more. Look out for first-grade national treasures from the Palace Museum in Beijing, such as a chrysanthemum teapot gifted to the Qianlong Emperor that was recently discovered to be made in France, and a quiver and bow case with French-made brocade. Highlights flown over from the Palace of Versailles include a perfume fountain – the only Chinese porcelain piece that Louis XV was known to have owned – and a portrait plaque of Qianlong that Louis XVI had displayed in his study. Tickets for this special exhibition are priced at $150, with concessions available. Holders of HKPM’s Full Access Ticket can also access The Origins of Chinese Civilisation exhibition at a combined price of $180.

French cultural and educational organisation Visionairs is presenting its debut exhibition ‘Notre-Dame de Paris, The Augmented Exhibition’ at the West Kowloon Cultural District. Using both artefacts and immersive augmented reality (AR), this research-based project tells the story of the cathedral’s 850-year history and brings this French landmark to life for audiences. Set to launch at the same time as the official reopening of Notre-Dame to the public in Paris, this exhibition transports visitors into a historically accurate recreation of the cathedral, spanning from its origins in the 12th century to the devastation of the 2019 fire and its subsequent restoration. Portable touch-screen tablets in 13 languages guide history lovers through 20 time portals to various grand events in time, such as King Henry VI’s wedding and the coronation of Napoleon. Apart from a full-sized replica of one of Notre-Dame’s chimera statues and a sculpture of one of its rose windows which survived the fire, there will also be more virtual delights such as visitors being superimposed as the cathedral’s animal statues, as well as collecting stained glass shards in a digital treasure hunt. From now until December 7, early-bird tickets are available at $248, while standard tickets will be available from December 8 onwards at $298. There will be concessions available, as well as discounts when purchasing in bundles of four or six.

Contemporary art centre Para Site is hosting a group exhibition inspired loosely by Wong Kar-wai’s 1997 film Happy Together, examining duality and the split between opposing pairs. The film’s protagonists try to repair their relationship by moving to Buenos Aires – the opposite side of the world and presented as the very antithesis of Hong Kong.  Over 20 artists from Hong Kong, neighbouring countries, and Latin America have gathered with works that allude to Hong Kong’s clichéd descriptor as being ‘between east and west’ or ‘between tradition and modernity’. Between these two contrasting corners of the world, encounters both real and imagined are examined with a wide range of artistic practices. This exhibition turns the spotlight on historical, social, and cultural connections between the Greater China area and the rest of the world – as well as how things might come together to form the queer happy-togetherness that Ho Po-wing and Lau Yiu-fai aim for in the film.

After a year of preparation, Sun Museum finally opened the doors to its new Sai Ying Pun venue in October with its launch exhibition. Featuring 132 works by 92 Hong Kong artists, this show features the diversity and cultural traditions of our city’s arts scene through various mediums such as ink, charcoal, and mineral pigments to oils, watercolour, and marker pen drawings. This is a great chance to soak in the creativity behind local artistic minds and discover fantastic talents for yourself.

Step into the forests of Sumatra with this digital art exhibition by local creative team ALAN (Artists Who Love Animals and Nature), which integrates technology into art pieces that raise awareness of wildlife and their natural habitats. Working with Indonesian conservation organisations and creatives, as well as artists from the Netherlands, France, and the UK, they created nine large-scale interactive pieces across five zones, with a blend of mixed reality, augmented reality, and AI. See rare Sumatran flora and fauna, watch the rainforest transition from day to night, transform yourself into an orangutan, trek with critically endangered Sumatran elephants, and more. Entry to this special exhibition is free, but visitors must register with the NF Touch mobile app.

This public art commission by Alicja Kwade is the Polish artist’s first site-specific installation in Hong Kong, and is available for viewing at Tai Kwun until 2026. Historically and socially contextualised objects make references to Tai Kwun history while exploring the passage of time and the present. Six glass structures stand in conjunction with eight bronze cast Monobloc chairs that are each positioned dynamically with a boulder. Drawing on the history of Tai Kwun’s Prison Yard as a place of waiting and confinement, Kwade’s art reflects on the burdens that we carry, and the idea of waiting as a form of punishment in contemporary times, with glass structures representing invisible barriers in our lives.  ‘Waiting Pavilions’ is a precursor to the artist's upcoming inaugural solo exhibition ‘Alicja Kwade: Pretopia’, which will open in Tai Kwun’s JC Contemporary on January 10, 2025.

M+ Museum’s new thematic exhibition aims to explore the connection between landscape and humanity in our post-industrial and increasingly virtual world. Literally translating to ‘mountain and water’, shanshui is a Chinese cultural concept that has inspired Asian ink paintings across millennia. Almost 130 works split into nine thematic sections will reimagine landscape through art, moving images, sound, design, architecture, and other large-scale mediums from a range of international artists, architects, and creators.

This exhibition features more than 40 haute couture pieces from the fashion artist Guo Pei, including Rihanna’s show-stopping yellow gown that she wore to the 2015 Met Gala. It marks the first major exhibition dedicated to this celebrated Chinese couture artist in East Asia. With a practice that has spanned almost four decades, Guo is among China’s first generation of contemporary fashion designers, with work reflecting Asian and global trends over the past century. You’ll often see traditional Chinese embroidery in her pieces, and this exhibition shows works inspired by fantasy dreamscapes, Eastern folklore, architecture, and space-time. The designer herself will hold a talk on September 21, and M+ will also host two screenings of Yellow Is Forbidden, which documents Guo’s journey in a predominantly Western field as she prepares a show for Paris Haute Couture Week.