Perrotin Gallery in Paris is presenting "When Beauty Appears," a solo exhibition by Taiwanese artist Lee Mingwei, running from April 25 to May 30, 2026. The show features seven interactive works created between 1995 and 2025, including pieces like "The Moving Garden," where visitors take a flower to give to a stranger, and "The Mending Project," which invites participants to repair garments with colored threads. The exhibition emphasizes ritual, exchange, and lived experience over passive observation.
The exhibition matters because it foregrounds the role of the visitor in completing the artwork through gesture and participation, challenging conventional notions of spectatorship in contemporary art. Lee Mingwei's focus on fragility, giving, and repair offers a counterpoint to the art world's frequent emphasis on spectacle and production, instead creating space for slow, intimate encounters that question how beauty and connection emerge in everyday acts.