Jeppe Hein and Takashi Murakami at West Bund Shanghai 2026

A stainless steel flamingo holds aloft a magenta balloon at Booth 1B06 of West Bund Art & Design 2026, its curved neck arching toward the sphere with a grace that seems to defy the metal’s weight. The sculpture stands on rough white stone, and the pink ribbon trailing from the balloon creates a line of pure colour against neutral walls. This is the visual vocabulary Jeppe Hein has cultivated for decades: forms that invite the viewer’s body into conversation with space, surfaces that reflect and absorb light, and a playfulness that softens conceptual rigour into something genuinely warm.

Booth 1B06 holds two distinct artistic presences. Hein’s practice explores how viewers and their surroundings become part of the work itself. His balloon-like animal figures and Wave Paintings examine the relationship between the body and its environment, the way light catches a polished surface or how empty space gains weight when framed by form. The sculptures operate in dialogue with the gallery itself, with the floor and walls and the person standing before them. Takashi Murakami takes a different but related path: his two paintings created in 2026 restage compositions from Utagawa Hiroshige’s One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, made between 1856 and 1858.

Hiroshige’s 100 Famous Views of Edo: Japonisme Reconsidered, Atagoshita and Yabu Lane and Hiroshige’s 100 Famous Views of Edo: Japonisme Reconsidered, New Fuji, Meguro carry Murakami’s unmistakable visual language into the nineteenth-century tradition of woodblock printing. Where Hiroshige observed the subtle architecture of landscape and daily life, Murakami layers his own vocabulary of contemporary colour and form into that historical frame. The series of Hiroshige paintings is being presented in China for the first time, marking that moment of cultural arrival. Murakami’s recasting asks what happens when an artist returns to the past not to revere it but to remake it, to examine the cross-cultural exchanges that shaped Japonisme itself.

Jeppe Hein, born in Copenhagen in 1974, trained at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and has spent three decades building a practice rooted in phenomenology and viewer participation. His sculptures, often cast in stainless steel or constructed from marble and stone, create moments where reflection becomes physical; a polished surface becomes a mirror that shifts as the viewer moves. His work has been acquired by MoMA, the Guggenheim and the Centre Pompidou. The balloon sculptures that began appearing in his practice in the early 2010s have become signatures of his ability to marry weightlessness with material presence.

Takashi Murakami’s engagement with Hiroshige began years before this 2026 series, emerging from his broader dialogue with Japanese artistic tradition and Western contemporary practice. Born in 1962, he has consistently returned to the question of how Japanese visual culture circulates globally, how tradition becomes material for contemporary remaking. His treatment of Hiroshige’s compositions introduces his vocabulary of colour saturation, pattern and form into the nineteenth-century prints, creating a deliberate collision between historical observation and contemporary vision.

Perrotin, representing both artists, operates from Paris, Tokyo, Shanghai and New York, and positions itself as a space where established practices meet emerging work across painting, sculpture, installation and digital media. The booth functions not as a display but as a conversation, where Hein’s investigation of viewer presence and Murakami’s historical consciousness operate as parallel inquiries into how art transforms the space around it and the memory contained within it. The presentation runs until November 15.

Jeppe Hein’s practice has been supported by major institutional acquisitions: MoMA, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Centre Pompidou each hold his work. His sculptures in stainless steel and marble have been exhibited internationally since the early 1990s, and his balloon animal series emerged around 2010 as a refinement of his phenomenological approach. The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, where he trained, shaped his understanding of how form and reflection create spatial experience. His works typically invite physical proximity and encourage viewers to observe how their own movement alters what they see in polished surfaces.

Takashi Murakami’s return to Hiroshige’s compositions builds on a practice spanning three decades of deliberate cultural exchange. Born in 1962, Murakami has worked across painting, sculpture and design, often restaging historical imagery through contemporary visual language. The two paintings presented at West Bund, Atagoshita and Yabu Lane and New Fuji, Meguro, are not reproductions but active reinterpretations, introducing saturated colour fields and Murakami’s characteristic vocabulary into nineteenth-century compositions. This approach reflects his broader investigation into how Japanese traditions circulate globally and transform through encounter with Western contemporary practice.

Perrotin operates from four cities: Paris, Tokyo, Shanghai and New York, positioning itself across painting, sculpture, installation and digital work. The gallery’s Shanghai location at West Bund places the presentation within one of China’s primary contemporary art fairs, where the Murakami Hiroshige series makes its public debut. The booth remains open through November 15, 2026, allowing sustained viewing of how two distinct artistic practices interrogate presence, memory and cultural transmission within the same architectural frame.

Perrotin operates from Paris, Tokyo, Shanghai and New York. The booth runs through November 15, 2026.