HONG KONG.- Ora-Ora announced the first solo show at its gallery by celebrated Hong Kong artist William Lim. Titled Time After Time, it opens on March 24, 2026.

Time After Time is composed of 23 paintings, executed at the beautiful West Lake in Hangzhou as the seasons unfolded over 2024 and 2025. Largely painted outdoors, often in sweltering heat and biting cold, each canvas is saturated with the immediate sensation of light, air, and weather, generating an immersive space that invites us to contemplate permanence through transience, and deep history through the fleeting present.

Ora-Ora has represented Wiliam Lim since 2023, and the Hangzhou series had been evolved under discussion with the gallery for 15 months.

Embracing the opportunity of repetition, Lim visited the same viewpoints at varying times to allow for a combination of consistency of form with contrasts of colour, tone and mood. An example pairing is the gentle pink and orange of Dawn Breaking over Su Causeway and the bright illuminations and reflections of its nocturnal counterpoint, Night Rain Over Su Causeway.

Lake, architecture and nature form a beautiful synthesis. Lim’s love for flowers and gardens, influenced by pilgrimages to sites like Monet’s Giverny, is a pursuit of the “Flowing Spirit”—an attempt to capture the essential breath and atmosphere of a place, a concept that resonates across artistic hemispheres. The Chinese garden is significant for the artist; rejecting rigidity and convention, the free-form garden symbolizes a yearning for creativity and imagination.

The West Lake has inspired artists and poets for thousands of years, and its rich legacy informs every brushstroke. Notably featured is the Octagonal Pavilion of Building No. 1, which once welcomed President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger during their groundbreaking visit in 1972—a pivotal moment that reshaped China’s relationship with the West (see paintings Building No.1 and Octagonal Garden).

The artist portrays the evolution of the year, beginning with Dawn of Spring, where bright red, vertical pillars border soft, verdant greens. Lotus Pond in Summer explodes with a sweltering abundance of life amidst sultry heat. In Octagonal Garden, the artist portrays the lake in autumn at the cusp of transformation: part flecked with rich, warm hues, part surrendering to crisp, chilly and gelid blues. In Winter Day, 1110, the artist offers us a cosy viewpoint from indoors, and the architectural details, the lines of the window, deliver respite and shelter from the freezing bluster of a winter’s day.

In the words of Ora-Ora co-founder and CEO, Henrietta Tsui-Leung, “We are thrilled to celebrate William Lim’s first solo show at Ora-Ora, which will take place in our gallery at the same time as Art Basel Hong Kong. William Lim’s paintings represent a profound synthesis of East Asian aesthetics and theories and Western perspectives. He creates a dynamic unity with harmony and fluidity at its heart, animated by the flowing spirit of life.”

Also in March 2026, Ora-Ora will be participating at Art Basel Hong Kong with a show titled HalluciNation. Details will follow in a separate press release. 2026 marks Ora-Ora’s 20th anniversary since its foundation in Hong Kong in 2006.

William Lim is a renowned artist, collector and architect. After graduating from the Department of Architecture at Cornell University, he established a prestigious architecture company, CL3, which altered the landscape of several major international cities.

He has participated in international architecture exhibitions including the Venice Architecture Biennale (2006 and 2010), the Hong Kong & Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture (2007 and 2012), and the Architecture and Heritage: Unearthing Future exhibition held at the National Museum of Modern Art, Seoul (2019).

Now devoted to painting, William Lim’s oil paintings are anchored in a sense of personal recollections, intimate domestic space, and the meteorological, temporal moments around him. His work often feature clues to familial narratives, and the flora and fauna of his surroundings in Hong Kong. His recent art exhibitions include a solo show at Poly Art Museum in Beijing (2025) and participations with Ora-Ora at Asia NOW in Paris, Art Basel Hong Kong and West Bund Art & Design in Shanghai (most recently in 2025). In addition, William Lim’s “Boarding Pass” series was selected by Cathay Pacific for a new business class lounge in Beijing.

He is a member of the Cornell University Board of Trustees, the Gallery Advisory Committee of Asia Society Hong Kong Centre, an Arts and Culture Council Member of Asia Society Hong Kong Centre and a museum expert adviser to the Hong Kong Leisure and Cultural Services Department. In 2018, the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Arts and Sciences. In 2019, William and his wife donated 90 artworks from their collection of "Living Collection" to M+, the museum of visual culture in the West Kowloon Cultural District of Hong Kong.