Artist: Les Lalanne

Ben Brown Fine Arts presents Les Lalanne: A Living Landscape, a comprehensive exhibition of the celebrated artistic duo Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne, presented at the Hong Kong gallery in conjunction with Art Basel Hong Kong 2026. Conceived as an imagined garden – an enigmatic, contemplative environment inspired by the philosophy and spatial poetics of the Japanese Zen garden – the exhibition invites viewers into a slowed, reflective encounter with the sculptural world of Les Lalanne.

The exhibition draws directly from the Lalannes’ environment. Their home in Ury, France, was a place of constant activity, where family life, animals and craftsmen shared the courtyard and art was inseparable from everyday existence. The house functioned as a working studio, while the surrounding gardens became a living museum. Gardens were particularly central to Claude’s practice – carefully shaped spaces of controlled wildness, where vegetation was allowed to flourish freely yet deliberately, animated her sculpture. This fusion of nature and art, cultivation and imagination forms the conceptual core of A Living Landscape.

The enduring appeal of Les Lalanne lies in their playful ingenuity and their ability to transform nature into fantasy. Their work blurs the boundaries between functional design, fine art and the decorative arts, infused with Surrealist wit and a timeless elegance. Although Claude and François-Xavier shared a studio and exhibited together throughout their careers, their practices are distinct. Claude’s work is sinuous and ethereal, rooted in direct observation of flora and fauna, while François-Xavier’s sculptures possess a formal gravity and functional intelligence that reimagines animal forms. He was drawn to angularity and structure; she to texture and growth. Yet their works are inextricably linked, and are most fully experienced together, as they transform the gallery into an enchanted, dreamlike world.

At the heart of the exhibition is a major installation of François-Xavier’s iconic Mouton, set within the imagined garden landscape. Evoking the rhythms of grazing and transhumance, the sheep appear momentarily paused within the terrain. Comprising key variations of Lalanne’s celebrated series, this installation marks the largest public presentation of the Moutons ever shown in Hong Kong. Lalanne first introduced the series with Moutons de Laine in 1965, later expanding it to include epoxy stone and bronze versions from 1977 onwards. The exhibition features significant works from Les Nouveaux Moutons, including Bélier (1994), Brebis (1994), Agneau (1996) and Le Mouton Transhumant (1988), alongside examples from the earlier Mouton de Pierre series, produced between 1979 and 1984. At once whimsical and functional, the sheep embody Lalanne’s concept of domestic surrealism, dissolving distinctions between sculpture, furniture and everyday life.

These works are presented in dialogue with major creations by Claude, including her celebrated Entrelacs and Ginkgo furniture, flora- adorned mirrors, electroplated candelabra and enchanting Choupatte sculptures. Together, they reflect Claude’s enduring fascination with nature, her distinctive humour, her Surrealist sensibility and her engagement with Nouveau Réalisme, as well as her pioneering integration of art into the domestic sphere. Through precise naturalism combined with moments of poetic transformation, Claude’s works turn familiar botanical forms into functional objects of wonder.

The exhibition also includes the artists’ celebrated collaborative work Singe aux Nénuphars, a rare and eloquent synthesis of their shared vision. In this piece, Claude created the tabletop, its surface evoking floating water lilies, supported by the outstretched arms of François- Xavier’s sculptural monkey. The work exemplifies the unique dialogue between the two artists, uniting Claude’s lyrical treatment of flora with François-Xavier’s sculptural interpretation of fauna.

Like a garden that distils the vastness of the natural world into a contained microcosm, the Lalannes distilled nature into objects. Experienced collectively, A Living Landscape transforms the Hong Kong gallery into an immersive environment where sculptural flora and fauna exist in poetic balance, where fantasy and reality converge, and where viewers are invited not to interpret, but to experience.