This group exhibition explores the concept of landscapes, both traditional and abstract, and the selection of work depicts both the external world and internal responses to nature. The artists featured are all gallery artists and include Tracey Emin, Billy Childish, Angel Otero, Teresita Fernández and Juergen Teller.

Extending beyond the purely representational, many of the works express subjective and personal reflections and relationships with the notion of landscape or horizon. Childish’s imagery combines a historical photograph of the area where he lives and works with personal iconography pertaining to his experience of the place.

Otero’s work, Macondo (2014) also alludes to a landscape that holds personal significance: the silicone and graphite painting is a distilled and abstract version of a photograph from his birthplace in Puerto Rico. Fernández also works with graphite, creating a horizontal line of hand-hewn graphite chunks trailing graphite lines. The piece evokes a horizon and the artists’ use of graphite also strips the contemporary work back to a more simple, solid artistic practice.

Recollection, memory and nostalgia are present throughout the collection: Emin’s Portrait from the past (2014) shows a figure in classical recline, reminiscent of many of her drawings but here detailed in embroidery on cotton. Teller combines the personal with the political with a display of photographs from his Nürnberg series (2005), capturing the growth of weeds against the stone architecture of his home town – a place with a complicated history reinvented from its fascist connections into a romantic ruin. Horizon is a bold exhibition from some of the world’s most influential and provocative artists.

Horizon, until 7 March, Lehmann Maupin, 407 Pedder Building, 12 Pedder Street, Hong Kong.

Credits
1. Teresita Fernández, Horizon (Halo), 2011, graphite, magnets, dimensions variable, LM15175.