Hotels are more than just places to sleep or eat, they’re a type of living room in a community where people come together to do all sorts of things.

As you enter the Beverly Hills Hotel, you see people congregating in the lobby, the Polo Lounge has echoes of chatter and the piano playing, while splashing at the pool and people getting a suntan are a norm. The Hotel Bel-Air is quaint and private with its jungle-like foliage and fauna, bringing people together for a drink at the Bar and Lounge or for their outdoor movie series, like the Halloween movie nights that are coming up.

But, another reason why people go to these Dorchester Collection hotels is to gaze at art. Art and photo exhibitions have always been a central point of both hotels, and there is a new art exhibition that recently launched and another launching this week: the Chris Wolston exhibition and Jin-Woo Prensena’s large-scale photograph exhibition.

Chris Wolston at Hotel Bel-Air

The former is done in collaboration with the bi-coastal design gallery The Future Perfect. Wolston is based in Medellín, Colombia and is known for his sculpted works. “The site-specific outdoor exhibition underscores the hotel’s enduring commitment to celebrating art and culture by placing artworks inspired by global locales in dialogue with its iconic surroundings,” states exhibition notes.

His work has been at The Beverly Hills Hotel, the sister hotel to the Hotel Bel-Air in an exhibition called Flower Power. In 2019 his exhibition Forbidden Fruit was on display in New York, and in 2021, his exhibition Temperature’s Rising was on display in Los Angeles. But in this current exhibition, that will launch on October 25th, visitors will see a series of terracotta planter chairs, surrounded by flora found in the Hotel Bel-Air’s garden- a nod to Medellín. Colombia is known to be the flower capital of the Americas, and so the exhibition shows how the practice of planting and cutting flowers exude joy, love, romance, and remembrance across cultures.

The terracotta chairs come from Wilston’s Nalgona series, which fit into his contemporary surrealism style that, as the notes describe, “arrive at an entirely original postmodern aesthetic imbued with joyful material fluency.” The exhibit will last until February 15, 2024. Visitors from the public are able to engage in a self-guided walking tour through the hotel’s gardens.

The exhibition is curated by James Hedges, the hotel’s Curator of the Arts, and it is free and open to the public seven days a week. All sculptures will be available for purchase through Hedges Projects.

Jin-Woo Prensena at The Beverly Hills Hotel

Already launched and lasting until February 15, 2024, is the Jin-Woo Prensena’s Reflections photo exhibit of twenty-four natural landscape and aerial photos from around the world. Prensena takes viewers of the exhibition to the Namib Desert, Whistler, Malibu, Hyde Park, and Capri. He is known for his daredevil extremes to get the right photograph, dangling from a helicopter at 7,500 feet above LA, to open-air flying over volcanic riverbeds in Iceland’s Highlands.

“The resulting images evoke a signature peaceful simplicity that belies the photographer’s daring methods. The aerial shots implicitly reference the artist’s presence yet remain abstracted in their hypnotic vastness,” states the exhibition notes.

“Having Jin-Woo Prensena’s exhibition at The Beverly Hills Hotel is a profound moment for us. His ability to transport viewers to stunning natural landscapes and inspire reflection aligns perfectly with the essence of the Hotel, where luxury meets artistic expression. We are honoured to showcase his talent and offer our guests a chance to immerse themselves in the beauty of the world through his lens,” says John Scanlon, General Manager of The Beverly Hills Hotel in notes.

The photographs will be available for purchase through Hedges Projects.