This Weekend
Spazio Nobile presents Pao Hui Kao, The Lunisolar House
Art Brussels, Horizons, Palais 5, Heysel, Hall 6 (Entrance hall 5)
curated by Devrim Bayar, Senior curator, KANAL-Centre Pompidou
Download the invitation
Download the catalogue
including the full process, the description of The Lunisolar House
Meet the Artist Pao Hui Kao this weekend from 4-6PM
Request an entrance for the Public Days
Saturday 25 April, 11-19:00 & Sunday 26 April, 11-18:00
In a world increasingly marked by displacement, uncertainty and shifting borders, the notion of “home” no longer signifies stability, but precarity—a fragile state of belief rather than a guarantee of protection. THE LUNISOLAR HOUSE by Taiwanese Pao Hui Kao proposes a large-scale installation for Art Brussels – Horizons 2026, curated by Devrim Bayar, Senior Curator of KANAL – Centre Pompidou in Brussels.
Pao Hui Kao reimagines home not as fortress, but as a delicate threshold: a shelter made of light, breath, silence and vulnerability. Through the humble yet transcendental materiality of folded tracing paper, rice glue and Urushi lacquer, Pao Hui Kao constructs a space that is at once architectural and meditative—a sanctuary without walls, a chapel without doctrine, a horizon where fragility becomes a new form of strength.
This art installation dissolves the borders between sculpture, architecture and contemplative space. Within the visionary framework curated by Devrim Bayar, it departs from the traditional booth format and unfolds instead as an experiential journey: a luminous interior of a white contemplative chamber, anchored by the Paper Pleats Bench.
An Illusion of Shelter
When crises strike—be they environmental disasters, war, social unrest or personal rupture—the idea of home reveals itself to be as fragile as paper. Our walls, administrations, nations, families: each presents the illusion of permanence, yet remains vulnerable to collapse. This art installation asks a fundamental question: If home is but a temporary skin, what does it mean to dwell?
Drawing from Gaston Bachelard’s poetic reflections on the house as a space of daydreaming, and Martin Heidegger’s meditation on building and dwelling, THE LUNISOLAR HOUSE proposes that shelter is not a physical guarantee but a spiritual gesture—a fold in time where one pauses to breathe.
Paper, in Pao Hui Kao’s practice, is not decorative. It is existential. Tracing paper, folded with ritual precision, becomes both structure and metaphor: it can bear weight, yet remains vulnerable to tear, the paper remains pure, uncoated. White, bare and honest. Paper Pleats consists of successive layers of tracing paper, rolled and adhered with rice glue to form a honeycomb structure that can be transformed into functional furniture. Original Paper Pleats preserves the material’s translucency within a mysterious, origami-like form reminiscent of a sea sponge. In contrast, Urushi Paper Pleats elevates the object through an added pictorial dimension, accentuating its contours with vertical, indeterminate lines that evoke “furniture-landscapes.”
The Material Architecture of Fragility
The Paper Pleats Shelter is constructed entirely from folded tracing paper and rice glue, the shelter rises like a breath suspended in stillness. Passing through the fold, visitors enter an interior of untouched white paper: The Inner Chamber. Each pleat captures light like soft skin. It is a space emptied of image, ornament, narrative—a return to elemental presence. Inside The Inner Chamber, the Paper Pleats Bench, a sculptural spine inviting visitors to sit, to dwell, to share silence in proximity to strangers. It is both object and invitation, linking human bodies through quiet contemplation.
THE LUNISOLAR HOUSE does not invite interaction. It invites presence. While viewers do not touch the installation, their breath and movement subtly animate it. Paper trembles. Shadows drift along pleats. Time dilates. In this, Pao Hui Kao follows a lineage of artists exploring the metaphysics of shelter and impermanence: Do Ho Suh, whose fabric corridors evoke memory in transit; Kimsooja, who transforms fabric into silent pilgrimage; Tadashi Kawamata, building precarious architectural interventions; Shigeru Ban, using paper to house the displaced; Francis Kéré, elevating vernacular architecture into communal ritual. Yet Pao Hui Kao’s voice is singular. Where Suh maps memory, Pao Hui Kao maps breath. Where Kawamata constructs, Pao Hui Kao folds. Her shelters are not ruins or monuments; they are horizons of vulnerability.
The title THE LUNISOLAR HOUSE refers to ancient cosmologies that measured time not through permanence, but rhythm of life and nature. The lunar embodies inner tides, emotional continuity. The solar stands for structure, cycle, renewal. Pao Hui Kao’s lunisolar vision is both sun and moon—an astronomical mirror, asking us to locate our own orbit. In a world obsessed with permanence, this installation proposes fragility as a horizon. A new ontology: to dwell not in ownership, but in awareness and self-consciousness.
THE LUNISOLAR HOUSE shifts the horizon inward. It is not grandiose in spectacle, but radical in vulnerability. It asks not what art can build, but what it can hold: doubt, fragility, tenderness, time and poetry. This work stands as a silent breathing chamber, a rare alternative to visual overload. A place where collectors, curators, artists and wanderers may pause, but to reinhabit their own sense of belonging – Text by Lise Coirier, October 2025.
All photos by Hugard & Vanoverschelde
The Roots of THE LUNISOLAR HOUSE
First emerging in her 2016 graduation project Paper and Water Installation at the Design Academy Eindhoven, Pao Hui Kao’s practice unfolds through quiet acts of transformation. In allowing water to permeate paper, she reveals a hidden resilience, where fragility becomes structure and doubt becomes a generative force. This gesture extends into a deeper, ongoing inquiry, notably in her first solo exhibition 25 Seasons at Spazio Nobile in 2023, where she explored shifting climatic rhythms through the lens of the Lunisolar Calendar—a system in which time itself is held in delicate balance.
Pao Hui Kao, Paper and Water Installation, Graduate Show, Master of Arts, Design Academy Eindhoven, Netherlands, 2016
The LUNISOLAR HOUSE, produced by Spazio Nobile and presented at Art Brussels in April 2026, marks a milestone for both Pao Hui Kao and Spazio Nobile. It connects us to the experience of the poetics of materiality within an art installation—conceived as a shelter of a new era—bridging contemporary art, applied arts, architecture, and spirituality. Matter gives way to rhythm, and structure to cycle, yet the impulse remains the same: to inhabit uncertainty, and to discover within it a new, quietly enduring form.
Pao Hui Kao, Lunisolar Calendar, Indian ink on paper, 2023. Private Collection, Switzerland.
The Lunisolar Calendar, which introduces the theme of Pao Hui Kao’s 25 Seasons (her first solo show at Spazio Nobile in 2023) describes the world as a spatial figuration: poetry – calligraphy – painting following the rhythm of nature. It suggests Pao Hui Kao’s “desire for the seasons” as she explores the essence of paper and Urushi, which she translates into her “landscape furniture” and “lacquer landscapes”. They appear like Matsuo Bashō’s haikus, a promise of rebirth in the midst of nature, François Cheng’s search for “true light” and a tribute to the Japanese writer Junichirō Tanazaki’s book “In Praise of Shadows”.
“The experience of paper and color brings back memories of my childhood: the light and colours of the jungle from the mountains in the Wulai region (New Taipei City), south of Taipei, where waterfalls and hot springs emerge.” – Pao Hui Kao
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The Presentation is open THE ONLY TRUE PROTEST IS BEAUTY
Fondazione Dries Van Noten
Featuring Isaac Monté & Pao Hui Kao
Palazzo Pisani Moretta
San Polo, 2766, 30125 Venice, Italy
25 April – 4 October 2026
Spazio Nobile is pleased to announce that Belgian artist Isaac Monté exhibits an extraordinary Crystallized Blue in Green sculptural vase and Taiwanese artist Pao Hui Kao presents her Original Paper Pleats Lounge Chair, made of tracing paper and rice glue, as part of the Presentation of the Fondazione Dries Van Noten.
Isaac Monté & Pao Hui Kao
Curated by Dries Van Noten with Geert Bruloot, Fondazione Dries Van Noten presents THE ONLY TRUE PROTEST IS BEAUTY, opening today in Venice. The Presentation stands as an exploration of beauty as a force of provocation, reflection and transformation. It explores craftsmanship as a language of expression and a conduit for emotion. It moves beyond conventional disciplinary borders, gathering fashion, jewellery, art, collectible design, photography, glass, ceramics, and material experimentation within a shared investigation of beauty’s ability to question norms and disrupt dogma. 200 works enter into conversation with the architecture, history, and decorative language of the Palazzo Pisani Moretta.
Founded by Dries Van Noten and Patrick Vangheluwe and housed within the historic Palazzo Pisani Moretta overlooking the Canal Grande, Fondazione Dries Van Noten celebrates craftsmanship as a vital language of cultural identity. Here, ideas take form through material, gesture, and the patient passage of time, as mind and hands meet in the act of creation. The Fondazione inhabits a space of transition, carrying traditions forward while continually reinventing them. It brings together established voices and emerging creators alike across art, design, fashion, architecture, food, and beyond. By encouraging cross-pollination between disciplines, it sparks fresh perspectives, bridges history with the present, and connects creativity rooted in place with global perspectives.
Read the interview of Dries Van Noten on TLmag by Marie Honnay
