Eric Niebuhr finds unexpected moments of poetry in Hong Kong’s urban landscape
The theme of American artist's upcoming solo exhibition is dragon holes – those gaps in buildings that, in feng shui parlance, allow the dragon to fly through freely
Artist Eric Niebuhr lived in America, Europe and Australia before moving to Hong Kong three years ago, whereupon he was immediately struck by the city’s unique visual identity.
To the eyes of the abstract painter, Hong Kong is more than the clichéd concrete jungle, the harbour and the hills. Niebuhr wants to capture what he sees every day, walking down streets where patches of sky are framed by endless rows of skyscrapers, and where amid the polluted, harsh, urban landscape, unexpected moments of poetry can be found.
The theme of his upcoming solo exhibition is dragon holes – those gaps in buildings that alleviate the suffocating “wall effect” of giant developments, or in feng shui parlance, holes for the dragon to fly through freely.
He keeps a logbook of buildings that have them: The Repulse Bay; the Bel-Air high-rises; the Arch in west Kowloon; the Central Government Offices, to name a few. These holes appeal to his interest in exploring the mysterious, he says.
“My friend said something about feng shui and the dragon holes the other day that I agreed with. With dragon holes, Hong Kong has managed to find a spiritual dimension in an incredibly material environment,” says the artist.