Steel and Light: Reflecting on Pieter Obels and Feng Xiao-Min at Opera Gallery London

This summer, Opera Gallery London offered visitors to London Gallery Weekend and beyond, a rare dialogue between a sculptor and a painter whose shared preoccupation with lightness made for one of the season's most compelling pairings. Pieter Obels and Feng Xiao-Min, which wrapped up in early July, brought together Obels' Corten steel sculptures and Feng Xiao-Min's abstract paintings in an exhibition that prided itself on invoking a genuine conversation between two artists who have long been working toward the similar ideas and themes. These ideas were framed precisely by Giulia Lecchini, Deputy Director of Opera Gallery London who argued that both artists were, in their own materials, chasing the same sensation of lightness. Where Obels was able to pull this out of something inherently heavy, Feng conjured this through translucent shifts of acrylic tones.

Pieter Obels (sculpture) Feng Xiao Min (painting) displayed at Opera Gallery London. Image credit: Opera Gallery London.

The exhibition itself also marked significant milestones for both men: it was Feng Xiao-Min's first UK exhibition in a decade, and remarkably, the first major UK showing for Obels altogether. Avid art fans might consider this a notable gap given the Dutch sculptor's international standing, with work held by institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles and The Morgan Library in New York.

What made the show resonate most was the care with which the visible contrasts between the two artists’ practices were handled. Obels, working from his studio in Tilburg, approaches Corten steel, a material defined by its hardness and its slow, rust-driven transformation, as though it were something pliable. He works without models or preliminary sketches, and lets forms emerge intuitively, often echoing the curvature of tree branches or the logic of botanical growth. The result is a sculpture that defies its own weight made of ribbon-like structures that appear suspended mid-motion, holding tension and balance in a single frozen gesture. His large-scale piece I Know the End, Let's Dance (2024), installed in the gallery's Medici Courtyard for the run of the show, extended that sense of weightlessness beyond the gallery walls and into the city itself.

Pieter Obels working in his studio. Image credit: René Van de Hulst and Opera Gallery London.

Feng Xiao-Min, working from Fontainebleau, pursued these themes of lightness and motion through entirely different means. Trained in calligraphy in Shanghai before relocating to France in the late 1980s, he built his paintings through layered pigment and tonal shift rather than line or gesture in the sculptural sense. Sitting between abstraction and landscape, his compositions aim to evoke the sensation of a place, and are positioned closer in spirit to depictions of memory rather than a representative still life. That dual inheritance, of Eastern calligraphic discipline and Western abstract painting, gives his surfaces an undeniable patience as they reward slowness and suspense.

Feng Xiao Min at work. Image credit: Nicolas Brasseur and Opera Gallery London.

Looking back, what distinguished this exhibition was the restraint with which the artists treated their audience and their own displays of their work. Neither artist shouts for attention in their practices, and instead were trusted to exhibit two very different practices side by side. One practice was rooted in structure and a real physical presence, and the other in atmosphere and contemplation. These were encouraged to speak to each other across the room, and perhaps even meet in the middle. For an exhibition staged during the deliberately busy, crowd-drawing context of London Gallery Weekend, this nuance perhaps was the boldest curatorial choice on offer.