Hong Kong art exhibitions to catch this week

The ‘Van Gogh Alive’ immersive art experience has travelled to over 100 cities around the world, and it’s returning to our shores on March 10. This exhibition stimulates the senses of sight, sound, and smell to fully bring visitors into Post-Impressionist master Vincent van Gogh’s artistic journey.  3,000 paintings and images including famous Van Gogh classics like ‘Sunflowers’, ‘Starry Night’, and ‘Wheatfield with Crows’ are waiting to be experienced in an elevated way, with approximately 30 giant screens working together to project, break down, and enhance the paintings. Projected simultaneously across walls, columns, and floors, visitors can feel like they’re actually wandering through the world created through his bold brush strokes. Apart from a redesigned layout that utilises more of the exhibition space than when the exhibition came to Hong Kong in 2019, this return also presents something new in the debut of ‘AI Van Gogh’; the technology brings the artist back to life and generates paintings in the Impressionist style for visitors to walk into. Classical music from Schubert and Bach will enhance the enjoyment of the artwork, while special scents are also used to heighten the immersive experience, evoking florals when viewing ‘Sunflowers’ or a fresh breeze in ‘Starry Night’. Early-bird tickets are available until February 27 for $160. Thereafter, the standard price will be $190, with concessions available. Note that tickets to ‘Van Gogh Alive’ do not include entry...

The Joyful Miniature Association (JMA) is presenting incredibly detailed dioramas of life in Hong Kong, including seven brand-new miniatures that have never been seen before. Peek into painstaking recreations of Sunday dim sum at Maxim’s Palace in City Hall, chaotic nightlife along Lan Kwai Fong, a moving model of the fifth generation of the Peak Tram funicular railway – and look out for the new dioramas like the legendary old Kowloon Walled City, aquatic animals on sale at one of the many shops along Goldfish Street, the cable car at Ngong Ping 360, and more. These miniature displays will be on show at The Peak Tower from April 25 to June 23 – JMA’s longest exhibition in the city.

Visit this special exhibition at M+ to see more than 60 masterpieces by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso spanning from the late 1890s to the early 1970s. Co-curated with the Musée national Picasso-Paris (MnPP), which holds the largest repository of Picasso’s work in the world, this is the first time that pieces from the MnPP are being shown together with works from an Asian museum collection. By placing Picasso’s work in dialogue with Asian contemporary art – approximately 80 works by more than 20 Asian and Asian-diasporic artists – the master’s enduring influence on art to this day is highlighted. Split into four sections that show how Picasso fits into four artist stereotypes – such as the genius in his self-mythologising works, and the outsider with how he consistently chose to upend artistic styles and traditions – this exhibition explores how Picasso became the quintessential modern 20th-century artist.  Tickets cost $240, with half-price concessions and adult-and-child combo deals available. Visitors with special exhibition tickets can also access the ‘Guo Pei: Fashioning Imagination’ exhibition, as well as all M+ general admission exhibitions starting from March 15.

The Affordable Art Fair returns to the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre for its 12th edition this year. With a mission to prove that art collection is for everybody, and just a hobby for the rich and snobby, the fair gathers 99 local and international galleries to present art pieces that are all priced under $100,000. Some highlights of this year’s Affordable Art Fair includes a marketplace installation where visitors can purchase hand-carved wooden apples and an ATM that you can feed prompts into to get one-of-a-kind, original art sketches. If you’d like to start buying art but don’t know how, then your first step should be heading to this annual art fair.

More than 110 exquisite artefacts from the Hong Kong Palace Museum, The Palace Museum in Beijing, as well as important loans from the British Museum, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and several museums in Hong Kong, will be on display at this special exhibition on Chinese food and drink culture. These pieces delve into the rich culinary traditions and culture of ancient Chinese people, ranging across 5,000 years of history. See how culinary practices and ingredients were exchanged between China and the nomadic peoples of Central and Western Asia; how the Ming and Qing dynasties enjoyed picnics and dining on pleasure boats; and how the importance of food and drink was transferred even from this world to the afterlife through burial rituals and offerings dating back to the Neolithic period. This fascinating culinary exploration is enhanced by multimedia presentations and technology, such as an interactive dining table where visitors can order food in a virtual feast while exploring the evolution of dining utensils and diverse cooking techniques. Out of the displays, eight pieces are grade-one national treasures from the Forbidden City, so keep an eye out. Tickets for this special exhibition are priced at $150, with concessions available. Those who purchase Full Access Tickets for HKPM can access this exhibition, as well as The Forbidden City and The Palace of Versailles and other exhibitions in galleries one to seven on the same day.

One of Hong Kong’s most unforgettable and unique creatives, local first-generation performance artist Frog King has an intriguing exhibition in Mercury Recalls. This Causeway Bay bar is housing a range of two-dimensional ink art as well as some dizzying multi-dimensional new media art, inspired by the Akashic records – believed by the Theosophical religious group to contain all universal events and thoughts that have and will occur. Swirls, lights, and shapes reflect the intangible concept of collective subconsciousness, and since it’s being hosted in a bar, there will also be a special range of cocktails to accompany the art. To gain access, guests at Mercury Recalls must show a token to unlock the speakeasy-style space Corsican Stars hidden inside, where Frog King’s works lie in wait.

Among the three recent Oi! Spotlight exhibitions is renowned Japanese contemporary artist Toyofuku Ryo’s first solo exhibition in Hong Kong. His Golden Tearoom is an elegant space filled with over 200 drawings of elements in Hong Kong life. Take your time identifying everything from local dishes to the clown motif for Ocean Park’s Hair Raiser rollercoaster. There is also the Golden Playroom, where visitors are invited to interact and engage with each other through board games and electronic elements. This area is also full to the brim with distinctly local items such as Red A plastic lampshades, golden dragon sculptures often seen in banquet restaurants, metal containers for ‘airplane olive’ snacks, and more.

This solo exhibition by Hong Kong artist Rolland Cheung sees him breaching the barriers around two-dimensional art by combining resin art, light, motion sensing, sound, and mechanical installations to create an immersive experience that delves into the relationship between humanity and nature. Work your way through the giant colourful artworks that resemble ice glaciers at times, and sand dunes in others. Cheung’s piece entitled A Tree is the largest in the show, measuring six by four metres, so don’t miss it in the corner – this will also be the largest resin art piece in Hong Kong.

When is Chinese calligraphy not actually calligraphy? Well, when it comes from Xu Bing’s brush, apparently. This Chinese artist is well known for what he calls ‘square word calligraphy’, which he developed in 1993 – it looks remarkably similar to Chinese characters but a closer look will reveal English words that have been deliberately designed and drawn to confuse the mind. This exhibition includes linguistic features and greetings unique to Hong Kong, as well as the Square Word Calligraphy Classroom, which provides writing tools and copybooks for visitors to attempt Xu’s special writing system.

In celebration of Sun Museum’s 10th anniversary, the ‘Colour of the Universe’ exhibition showcases 120 stones of rare colours and jade carvings dating from the Song dynasty to the early to mid-20th century. Fans of precious stones will enjoy seeing these art pieces made from materials such as white jade, agate, amethyst, tea quartz, coral, lapis lazuli, spinach jade, and more. Keep an eye out for the oldest jade carving in the exhibition: a five-petaled agate cup in the form of a flower from the Northern Song dynasty.