Pékin Fine Arts is pleased to present Daphné Mandel’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, as she continues exploring Hong Kong’s man-made urban landscapes juxtaposed against a backdrop of lush tropical greenery. The close-knit cohabitation of edifices and foliage, the natural vs. the artificial, provide the starting off point for her representations of a Hong Kong both real and fantastic. The Hong Kong of her imagination, is familiar yet surreal; ultimately rendered as an exquisite city of the artist’s imagination.

Hong Kong, for me, is a city of densely packed contrasts, by virtue of its compact urban fabric that coexists and intersects with its lush and abundant natural environment. Organic City presents a series of works that transpose and reinterpret this paradox in my own visual language: A city, simultaneously man-made and “organic” as living breathing matter, alive, and natural. – Daphné Mandel

Daphné Mandel’s latest works depict deliberately imaginary and incongruous scenes of intertwined relationships between the city’s manufactured and natural elements. In Oasis and in Pink Lady, luxuriant tropical foliage and rock formations infiltrate and wrap Hong Kong’s archetypal building facades. Tree Metamorphosis and Roots evoke the tenacious vegetation surviving in the city's concrete jungle; the relentless roots perforating walkways, stairs, retaining walls and edifices, exploiting any gap or void to reconquer lost territory.