This is the first gallery to take up residence in Victoria Dockside and follows Perrotin’s recent additions of a flagship gallery in the Bund, Shanghai, and a salon on Avenue Matignon in Paris.
Interior architect André Fu, who has collaborated with the Perrotin for more than a decade, has created the Interiors of the new Hong Kong gallery. Along with his studio AFSO, Fu was also responsible for the interiors of the Perrotin Shanghai and the Perrotin Tokyo as well as the former Perrotin Hong Kong.
The concept of the gallery was heavily inspired by the unique spatial quality of the premises. With its prominent views of the city’s iconic harbour and expansive floor to ceiling windows, this is a highly welcoming and intimate art space that aims to provoke personal interaction with the artworks.
Hallmark elements of the original Hong Kong gallery are referenced such as raw oak flooring and anodised bronze mullions, linking together the past and the present. The 2,500 sq ft gallery is made up for two exhibition rooms, a private salon and an office.
A key element of André’s design philosophy is to create engaging spatial experiences for people so his plan for the gallery was to craft three separate exhibition areas, with similar proportions but with markedly different personalities, allowing artists to choose the room where they would like their work to be shown. The entrance foyer area creates an engaging central access point, a space where people can gather and meet that connects to each individual exhibition space. The foyer is also integrated with a reception area, and provides a framed vista that promotes a sense of visual depth into the gallery.
The first space that visitors enter is a symmetrical, “white cube" gallery space with landscape proportions that allow good viewing distance for each wall. The second gallery space features large windows, allowing a great deal of natural light to enter the room, untypical of most galleries. The final space is the Salon, a room that can be used for a variety of purposes, from small events to private discussions. The salon incorporates a unique art display system adapted from the model first designed by Perrotin’s founder for the flagship showroom in Paris.