In the aftermath of the devastating Los Angeles wildfires this January, British-American artist Emma Webster has channeled her experience into "Vapors," her solo debut exhibition at Perrotin Hong Kong opening March 25, 2025. The collection of 11 haunting canvases creates an ethereal world suspended between disaster and aftermath, exploring the strange banality of daily life that continues despite catastrophe.
Webster, who resides in California, witnessed firsthand as Pacific Palisades—her maternal family's neighborhood—burned to the ground during record-breaking dry conditions. This exhibition emerged from that apocalyptic landscape, filtered through her unique artistic process that blends physical and virtual reality.
installation view of the exhibition
"Disaster, it's like the world slows down, you only focus on one thing," Webster explains in a recent interview. "Each of these paintings has a kind of disaster tunnel vision—all you can focus on is the clover, all you can focus on is the tree, and the whole background falls away."
The exhibition's title refers to both the physical phenomenon of suspended liquid in air and the historical term "to have the vapors," describing a melancholic emotional state. This duality perfectly captures the exhibition's essence—environmental transformation paired with existential reflection. The paintings employ misty grays and thin glazed brushstrokes to create landscapes that hover between reality and imagination.
Webster's process is distinctively contemporary. Rather than painting from direct observation, she constructs digital dioramas using virtual reality tools, which she then translates onto canvas. "The virtual reality component came by total chance," she admits. "I had been making dioramas by hand when my friend first let me borrow his Oculus headset." This technological approach, combined with her background in traditional painting techniques, creates what she calls "a wholly new genre of painting" that exists at the intersection of plein-air landscape, still-life, and virtual reality.
In "The Means That Make," one of the exhibition's standout pieces, Webster introduces abstraction while maintaining realistic light effects. "The sky sail above the horizon has an openness to interpretation that harkens to the spiritual paintings of William Blake," she notes. The piece took over two years to complete, developing a rich patina of glazes that gives it a sense of age and depth.
The Means That Make
Birds appear as recurring motifs throughout the exhibition, which Webster describes as "the characters of the atmosphere." These creatures, like everything in her work, exist in a liminal space between representation and abstraction. "None of the birds are real birds," she explains. "They're all three in one—drawing, sculpture, painting."
This exhibition demonstrates Webster's ability to create ambiguous spaces that invite viewer interpretation. The landscapes possess a deliberate emptiness, offering what she calls "prompts for the viewer to jump in." Scale becomes fluid—a shrub might be underwater vegetation or a distant forest, and the sun might be a distant star or a tangible object within reach.
Alaska
Displaying these works in a Hong Kong skyscraper creates an additional layer of meaning. As Webster observes, "Humans shouldn't be this high off the ground... We're floating in the air, and it's a show called Vapors." This juxtaposition of artificial environments—both within the paintings and in their display context—highlights our complex relationship with the natural world.
Through "Vapors," Webster invites viewers to contemplate our collective response to climate disaster, exploring the uncomfortable space between awareness and action, between witnessing catastrophe and continuing daily life, all rendered in ethereal landscapes that hover like breath suspended in air.
