A new exhibition at the Opera Gallery London, is offering two very different – yet curiously complimentary – sets of artistic responses to nature. It highlights the work of Dutch sculptor Pieter Obels and French-Chinese painter Feng Xiao-Min.
This is Obels’s first major London exhibition for ten years. Born in 1968 and now based in Tilburg in his native Netherlands, Obels is a sculptor who works primarily with the kind of complex Corten steel structures on display here.
Opera Gallery
He welds sheets of steel into flowing curves to form one continuous and sinuous series of interweaving loops. These often rest, seemingly defying gravity, on a single fixed point. Yet most of them can be rotated by hand, allowing viewers to engage with the art.
The fascination in these sculptures lies in the invitation to trace their delicate patterns with eye and hand. They writhe like the tendrils of climbing plants. This effect is reinforced by Obels’ deliberate weathering of their surfaces into a rusty earthen brown that almost gives them the appearance of being covered by lichen.
Obels’ sculptures spill out over into outside space in the Medici Gardens at the rear of the gallery. The monumental piece placed there acts as a visual confirmation of how stunningly Obels’ work integrates itself into natural settings. Meanwhile, its title – I Know the End, Let’s Dance (2024) – tells us about Obels’ intuitive practice. As he told me on opening night: “The less I think about the sculpture, the better it is.”
Feng Xiao-Min
In dialogue with Obels’ work, the walls of the gallery carry the mist-laden compositions of Feng Xiao-Min. This is the first major London exhibition of this Chinese-French artist, who was born in Shanghai in 1959 but has lived and worked in Fontainebleau in France for 35 years. It is good to see this intriguing body of work, which draws on both western and Chinese artistic traditions, in this setting.
Opera Gallery
Feng deliberately leaves his paintings untitled to avoid giving them any specificity. As with Obels, they are organic responses to his feelings and engagement with nature at the time of composition. This shapes the palette used in the individual pieces. Some he described to me as expressing chaleur (warmth), while others are cooler and achieve their effect through subtle layering of pigments and tonal shifts across the canvas.
The result is a series of dreamlike landscapes that defy traditional approaches to perspective. There is no central point. Instead, Feng seems to start his compositions with three to four short lines in white, red or black grouped around the middle, lower-part of the canvas. Around these focal moments in the narrative of each work, the eye tracks across, picking out hints of structure, wisps of weather and intimations of landscape.
Feng’s early training in calligraphy is readily identifiable in his practice, influenced by, among others, the dynamic art of the Qing dynasty painter Shi Tao and his efforts in his works to use the past to open up the present.
Nicolas Brasseur
The lines that punctuate Feng’s paintings are like calligraphic marks, while the swirl of interblending tones are redolent of J.M.W. Turner’s more abstract works. This provides a compelling amalgam of Chinese and western approaches to the depiction of nature in paintings whose depth rewards the viewer’s gaze.
Feng’s works speak of how landscapes make us feel. The physicality of Obels’ works provides a more sensory engagement with nature. Obels grew up on a farm, which gave him a sense of the human relationship with nature that defines his work. City-born Feng’s ethereal visions encourage us to appreciate nature in a more imaginative way. Like Obels’ structures, these two approaches are harmonically in balance in this exhibition.
Pieter Obels | Feng Xiao-Min is at the Opera Gallery London until July 5 2026
