EVENT DESCRIPTION
Hong Kong Arts Centre announces its Collaboration in Collision flagship exhibition, from August 26 to September 20, 2026, inviting seven established artists/art groups from Hong Kong, Mainland China, and abroad, representing diverse cultural backgrounds—including Fang Lijun × Public, Kurt Chan Yuk-keung × Shiro Matsui, Raymond Fung Wing-kee × PRS, and Juri Hwang × Andreas Kratky. These seven participating artists/art groups construct four relational axes that will collaborate and collide with each other in a trans-spatial, field-responsive art exhibition that transforms the static art space of the Hong Kong Arts Centre into an organic, collaborative activity. Together, these works form a cross-spatial, site-responsive exhibition transforming the Hong Kong Arts Centre from a static gallery into an organic, collaborative ecosystem.
Hong Kong Arts Centre carries the accumulated memories of Hong Kong’s art and exhibition history; this institutional history is a future history that can be revitalised and continuously extended by artists.
Collaboration in Collision (or Field · Collision · Collaboration in Chinese) triangulates three interlocking terms: “Field” establishes the exhibition’s contextuality and responsiveness, anchoring all artistic interventions within the specific architectural and historical context of the Hong Kong Arts Centre; “Collision” designates to the catalytic moment of encounter between distinct creative universes; and “Collaboration” signifies the generative synthesis emerging from such friction. The interpuncts ( · ) between the terms are not separators, but connective tissues, suggesting that these three states are in a perpetual dynamic relationship.
The seven participating artists/art groups form four relational axes, and each participant brings his/her own visual vocabulary, including ceramics, illustrations, digital media, interactive installations, digital images, and art and technology presented in conventional and avant-garde manners, as well as materials such as ancient architectural fragments, recycled waste, plastic sheets, fishing lines, neon lights, and X-ray films. Through structured dialogue, these visual vocabularies continue to collide, coexist, overlap, or intermingle with one another, ultimately giving rise to unexpected artistic expressions and fostering a ‘third voice’. Going beyond a conventional group exhibition, Collaboration in Collision experiments with how two artistic universes connect through their mutual gravitational pull.
- Fang Lijun × Public：Fang Lijun’s Ocean Ecology Series is exhibited in the atrium of the Hong Kong Arts Centre, making it the first work encountered by every visitor. Having received an enthusiastic response in Bangkok, Shanghai and more, the Ocean Ecology Series makes its debut in Hong Kong. Fang’s artworks of recycled materials and debris reflect his identity through his characteristic, almost serendipitous environmental awareness. The year 2026 also marks a particularly significant return. Following his first exhibition in the Hong Kong at Arts Centre in 1993, Fang returns to the same venue 33 years later to initiate a creative dialogue that transcends time. Visitors will have the opportunity to take part in a beach clean-up at Big Wave Bay on Hong Kong Island, transforming the plastic waste they collect into artistic materials to collaboratively create a large-scale art installation, meant to be exhibited alongside Fang’s artwork themed on marine debris at Hong Kong Arts Centre.
- Kurt Chan Yuk-keung x Shiro Matsui：Kurt Chan and Shiro Matsui had only met once before the exhibition was conceived. Brought together by the curator’s intuition, the two artists were connected by deep, undercurrent-like similarity in their underlying conceptual concerns and material explorations. Chan and Matsui each possess unique dual trajectories, spanning over three decades of university-level teaching alongside continuous artistic practice. What fundamentally binds them together, beyond technical virtuosity, is a shared inquiry into the relationship between human existence and the cosmos. In response to this orientation, they habitually incorporate elements of nature, the universe, and life into their works. For this exhibition, they employ ceramics, painting, digital imaging, 3D printing, installation, water, air, and other media to construct their self-sufficient universes— “micro-cosmos”— through which they reflect upon the human position within a larger order.
- Raymond Fung Wing-kee × PRS： a multi-generational, multidisciplinary partnership that encompasses the creative collision between architecture, ink painter, digital interactive media and stage design. Their collaboration operates through three distinct temporal modalities, employing Hong Kong as a method and space as its central proposition, distilling from the rubble of history a future archaeology of temporal imagination—a continuous dialogue between space, history, futurity, nature, body, and light and shadow. The work comprises three interrelated scenes, with a narrative path that departs from historical space, passes through imaginings of the city’s future morphologies, and ultimately returns to the immediate relationship between the viewer and the present space.
- Juri Hwang × Andreas Kratky：An artist couple from South Korea and Germany, respectively, brings to the exhibition a long-accumulated force of collaborative practice that transcends cultural and disciplinary boundaries. These two distinctly autonomous practices intertwine technology with bodily experience, computation with memory, spatial perception with family history within their collaboration. The exhibition juxtaposes the artists’ individual works with their collaborative creations, proposing that when both body and geography are in constant flux, one’s sense of belonging—and the roots one carries—become a site of continuous exchange.
The four collaborated works are revealed in different spaces at the Hong Kong Arts Centre in an interactive, embodied and singular experience that bears the imprint of the contemporary. The curatorial trajectory of this exhibition unfolds from the vertical circulation of the entrance atrium to the Pao Galleries, inviting participates to explore the Hong Kong Arts Centre whilst engaging in meaningful dialogue with the art pieces. Collaboration in Collision breaks from traditional formats, making the architectural space an integral part of the artistic presentation. The artworks not only blend into the venue but also take on a unique character depending on the specific space, promising an inspiring and immersive journey through the interaction between the artists, the artworks and the audience.
Public participation is an integral part of Collaboration in Collision. Visitors are invited to join the exhibition’s workshops and guided tours to partake in the creative process and engage in meaningful dialogue. Local upcycling designers will lead the public on a beach clean-up at Big Wave Bay on Hong Kong Island, collecting plastic waste meant for a large-scale art installation. The finished work will be exhibited alongside Fang Lijun’s artwork on the theme of marine debris, further conveying the message of environmental protection.
