Exhibition Details

A chapter of The Living Square at Mandarin Oriental Mayfair.
Mandarin Oriental has long embodied the idea of cultural passage. Rooted in Asian heritage and sensibility, yet firmly embedded within the great capitals of the West, the brand exists at a point of continual exchange. At Mandarin Oriental Mayfair, this dialogue finds a particularly resonant setting. Hanover Square has historically been a place of encounter: a site shaped by migration and influence, where foreign-born composers, writers, designers and thinkers transformed British cultural life. Mayfair itself has always thrived not on purity, but on permeability, where ideas cross borders and difference becomes a catalyst for innovation.
EAST ↔ WEST: Creative Crossings unfolds within this lineage. Conceived as a chapter of The Living Square, the exhibition brings Asian galleries into dialogue with their London counterparts, staging a series of encounters rather than a singular narrative. Each participating gallery contributes an artist, a material language and a worldview. These are paired across geographies to create works in conversation, allowing affinities and tensions to surface organically. The show does not seek synthesis or fusion. Instead, it foregrounds reciprocity. Objects sit side by side, practices resonate or diverge and cultural positions are held in productive tension. Craft and concept, tradition and speculation, restraint and excess, permanence and impermanence coexist without hierarchy. Meaning emerges in the space between.
In hosting EAST ↔ WEST: Creative Crossings, Mandarin Oriental Mayfair positions itself not simply as a venue, but as a cultural mediator. The hotel becomes a contemporary salon, a place where global creative languages are made visible, legible and experiential. Guests are not passive viewers, but participants in the crossing itself, invited to move between worlds, materials and ideas, and to inhabit the in-between.
As one of the participating galleries in this context, Charles Burnand Gallery presents two of its represented designers, Jung MyungTaek (known for his Korean art furniture) and Fredrik Nielsen (who works primarily with glass), whose practices anchor distinct yet resonant explorations of material, process and form. Nielsen presents The Last Days of April in blown and cast glass, while Jung showcases Creating a Void 16S3 in maple, stainless steel and steel. 
Other participating artists include Bethan Laura Wood, Moon Seop Seo, Brodie Neill, Tu Wei-Cheng, Mao-Lin, Lee Chang-Soo, Miyuki Guo and more.