Fabrice Hyber and Yu Kongjian Imagine a Breathing Nature

What happens when an artist and a landscape architect begin to see nature not as something to control, but as a living organism to engage with? This question lies at the heart of The Weeping Sponge, the exhibition that ShanghART Gallery dedicates to Fabrice Hyber at its Beijing space. The project emerges from the dialogue between Hyber and renowned Chinese landscape architect Yu Kongjian, the theorist behind the concept of “Sponge Cities” - cities designed to absorb water and coexist with climate change rather than resist it through rigid and invasive infrastructures. For both, the landscape is a permeable structure, capable of adapting and transforming over time. For more than thirty years, Hyber has pursued a similar experiment in the French region of Vendée, where he transformed one hundred hectares of land into an open-air ecological laboratory. There, the artist cultivates the land, plants trees, and creates water systems while respecting the valley’s natural rhythm and intervening as little as possible. His works emerge from this slow relationship with the territory, shaped by rain, vegetation, and climatic transformation. The paintings on view do not simply document a landscape: they convey the idea of a nature that continues to change, breathe, and regenerate together with humanity.