At Art Basel Hong Kong, Plenty of Trophy Works, but a More Measured Buyer

At the end of March, Hong Kong Art Week opened. On the first VIP day of Art Basel Hong Kong, a long line had formed outside the halls before noon. This year’s fair brings together 243 galleries from 40 countries and territories, including 25 first-time exhibitors, an expansion of 37 percent over last year.

“The galleries have been tremendously enthusiastic. The Encounters sector received an unprecedented number of applications, and we selected 16 works from more than a hundred submissions. Kabinett includes 33 participating galleries, the most we’ve ever had.” That was how Angelle Siyang-Le, the director of Art Basel Hong Kong, put it to us. Hong Kong remains contested ground in Asia’s art world, but on the floor we sensed a shift: after last year’s buying frenzy, which followed the lifting of travel restrictions, collectors, chastened by changing economic conditions, have been moving into a steadier mode, more rational and more cautious.

The Yit team spent the first day at Art Basel Hong Kong, speaking briefly with Angelle Siyang-Le, the fair’s director, and Alexie Glass-Kantor, curator of Encounters, while also gathering impressions from three Chinese collectors of different generations. Li Wei, Once Upon a Long Time Ago, 2020-2024, installation view at Art Basel Hong Kong, 2024. “Why don’t we meet by the ‘7-year-old child’?”

“Why don’t we meet by the ‘7-year-old child’?” Alexie told us. The “7-year-old child” she meant was in fact one of the 16 large-scale installations in Encounters: the Chinese artist Li Wei’s Once Upon a Long Time Ago. Its six child figures are based on the artist’s imagined likenesses of a group of “super politicians” at age seven. Though they are children, they are devoid of innocence. Dressed neatly, they are posed around a playground. The moment we stepped into the setting, modeled on a local Hong Kong playground, we were startled by a sudden sensor-triggered burst of birdsong.

Why seven-year-old children? Supposedly, seven is the age at which personality is fully formed, while “growing into adulthood is seen as the beginning of degeneration.”

“I want these large installations to work like landmarks, something people remember at a glance. If friends are arranging to meet, they’ll say, as I just did, ‘Let’s meet by the ping-pong table,’ or ‘Let’s meet by the map.’” Alexie said. Naminapu Maymuru-White, Larrakitj Forest, 2024, installation view at Art Basel Hong Kong, 2024. Tenzing Sherpa, Stairway to Heaven, 2023-2024, installation view at Art Basel Hong Kong, 2024. Of the 16 works in this year’s Encounters sector, 11 were commissioned specifically for the fair.

The artists come from across the world: from Nepal, the Philippines, South Korea, Pakistan, and India, as well as Indigenous artists from Cuba, Chile, and Australia.

“I like working with artists from different places, so that viewers can really feel Hong Kong in dialogue with the world.” MAK2, Copy of a Copy of a Copy of a Copy, 2024, installation view at Art Basel Hong Kong, 2024. The third-floor hall opens with a monumental work by the Hong Kong artist MAK2. At 8 meters high and 6 meters wide, it creates a miniature “Art Basel.”

The work is divided into two parts. The lower portion resembles a perfectly ordinary fair booth; the upper portion imagines the same fair two hundred years later, weathered and decayed, with grass growing out of it. The contrast produces a strange sadness and solitude, edged with dark humor.

“She turned an Art Basel booth into an artwork. It’s very funny, almost a mockery of the works inside an art fair,” Alexie told us. The idea for the project first emerged in 2022, when she and the artist built a makeshift little stand out of milk crates in an alley in Hong Kong.

“MAK2 is a very witty young local Hong Kong artist. The work reflects how hard it is, in contemporary society, to distinguish the real from the fake. She imitates her own earlier style and conceptual approach, then evolves new forms of expression from that. It also speaks to Hong Kong’s particular character, including feng shui,” Angelle Siyang-Le said. Ming Wong, Friendship First, Competition Second, 2024, installation view at Art Basel Hong Kong, 2024. Another sculptural installation that stirred strong recognition among viewers was the Singaporean artist Ming Wong’s work, inspired by the “ping-pong diplomacy” between China and the United States in the 1970s and examining the role of sports culture in global diplomacy.

Ken Kagami performing Retrospective, 2024, at Art Basel Hong Kong, 2024. The most crowded work, with the longest line, was the Japanese artist Ken Kagami’s improvised drawing performance. He invited audience members to sit before him and then, from imagination, draw the genitals of the fully clothed person seated in front of him.

Atsushi Kaga, installation view at Art Basel Hong Kong, 2024. If Ken Kagami’s work was provocative and avant-garde, the Japanese artist Atsushi Kaga’s was gentler and warmer, as if one had drifted into a late Edo kabuki theater. Onstage was a 6-by-4-meter painting covered in gold leaf. A poker rabbit named Saatchi sat at a table, surrounded by foods made by the artist’s mother: radishes, cucumbers, and noodles.

“We invite viewers to step onto the tatami one at a time, move close to the painting, and truly enter it, to be immersed in it. It’s a wonderful experience,” Alexie said. Haegue Yang, Contingent Spheres, 2020, installation view at Art Basel Hong Kong, 2024. We also saw weaving and fiber art appearing ever more frequently in the mainstream narrative. The Korean artist Haegue Yang combines the traditional Filipino weaving technique Binakol with Op Art of the 1960s, creating two anthropomorphic rattan sculptures.

Above them hangs a vast white tasselled canopy, enveloping the sculptures.

“Her work addresses a whole series of transformations that took place in the Philippines under a Western-dominated cultural and social order,” Angelle Siyang-Le said. Catalina Swinburn, Landless, Water Ritual, 2024, installation view at Art Basel Hong Kong, 2024. Swinburn, who is from Chile, made this series of fiber works, each about 5 meters high, by processing archival maps and encyclopedias and then hand-weaving them with assistants.

“They look both like beautiful textiles and like sacred ruins, while exploring weaving, practice, thought, resilience, and memory,” Alexie said. Adila Suleman, When You Have Had Enough of Paradise, 2024, installation view at Art Basel Hong Kong, 2024. These works were only just installed in the 24 hours before VIP opening day. Their dimensions were strictly limited to an area no larger than 10 meters square, and they “could not obstruct visitor circulation, block sightlines, or interfere with the normal activity of the exhibition.”

“Every one of them is eye-catching, ambitious, powerful, deeply moving . . .” Alexie said, pulling a face. “I really enjoy the feeling of pushing energy to its limit within constraints.” Thaddaeus Ropac booth, Art Basel Hong Kong, 2024. Image courtesy of Thaddaeus Ropac. The art market is never free of broader economic conditions, and after moving from the heat of early last year into the slowdown at year’s end, the 2024 edition of Art Basel Hong Kong, the first major fair of the spring, inevitably carries some symbolic weight.

In the traditional Galleries sector, major dealers were pushing hard, even bringing works by twentieth-century masters and estates they have taken on more recently, hoping to claim an early victory after last year’s subdued market. Each Modern booth, Art Basel Hong Kong, 2024, image courtesy of Each Modern. In Kabinett, works by Park Seo-Bo were on view. This year marks the first time 33 galleries have participated in the sector.

Particularly noteworthy were works by the Korean Dansaekhwa master Park Seo-Bo, who died last year.

In Discoveries, the artist Noritoshi Hirakawa simulated the look and smell of an African forest at night inside a wooden box lit by a single dim yellow lamp; all four walls of the box were covered with his photographs. Discoveries sector, Art Basel Hong Kong, 2024. In Discoveries we saw fresher subjects and forms: emerging artists conjuring the scene and scent of a nocturnal African forest inside a box, and another who brought a lifeguard chair from an outdoor pool onto the fair floor and livestreamed the passing crowd.

Here are first-day impressions from three collectors of different ages. Hauser & Wirth booth, Art Basel Hong Kong, 2024. “I’ve been coming to Art Basel Hong Kong every year since the first edition, in 2013. I remember vividly that there was once a floating boat called Jumbo Restaurant, a very iconic place in Hong Kong, and Basel held an event on that boat that year. Back then the scale wasn’t very large. By this year, Basel has become a very mature fair. My first impression on entering was that the works were genuinely strong and the crowds very lively, but there seemed to be fewer visitors from mainland China than last year. Maybe the gates had only just reopened in the previous two years, and things were still warming up; now that energy is gradually being released.”

Poppy Jones, White Anemones, 2024, one of the works acquired at the fair by Guan Dongyuan. “As for collecting trends, I don’t think much has changed. People are still fairly rational. More of them are looking at the quality of the work and the artist’s performance, rather than market performance. When collecting art, the market ought to be a secondary consideration. If you simply follow whatever artist, style, or trend is hot, trends recede quickly now, and you may regret it almost immediately.”

“Art collecting ultimately has to return to the quality of the work itself.” Aks Misyuta, Boy’s Midnight, 2022, another work acquired at the fair by Guan Dongyuan. “That was my mindset this time too. I bought two works, and I’m still negotiating for another. They’re all by relatively new artists. By ‘new,’ I don’t mean I’m seeing them for the first time. I mean I’ve been watching their development over the past few years.”

“Take Poppy Jones. I had seen her before in a group show, but at the time I hesitated and felt I should watch for a few more years. Over the years she’s become more and more mature, and the market has increasingly recognized her, so this time I moved quickly. On the first VIP day I just made a fairly quick round. Tomorrow and the day after, I’ll keep coming back. A fair like Basel rewards repeated looking. As works sell, galleries keep rehanging and updating what’s on the walls.”

“It’s a very good opportunity. On a concentrated platform like this, in a matter of hours, you can see the artists represented by the world’s most important galleries. That’s rare.” David Zwirner booth, Art Basel Hong Kong, 2024. “I went to Frieze Seoul last September, and this is my first time at Art Basel Hong Kong. Frieze felt more dominated by Korean collectors. Here you see many more Western faces. It feels more international, and the quality of the works the galleries have brought is somewhat higher.”

“Overall, there are a great many wall works, and the selection skews conservative. That, too, says something about the market. This is an art fair, after all. For commercial reasons, dealers will naturally bring work that is easier to place.” Katinka Bock, K-European Carp, 2017, image courtesy of the artist and Jocelyn Wolff. Katinka Bock, Logbook, Artium Museum of Contemporary Art, 2021.

Image source: Artium Museum of Contemporary Art. “I came mainly to learn. I used to have little interest in sculpture or abstraction, but on a friend’s recommendation I started paying attention to a German sculptor, and I knew she had work here, so I came specifically to see it. After seeing the actual piece in person, I may want to acquire it.” Huidi Xiang, Magic Burnout, 2024, at the Yve Yang booth, Art Basel Hong Kong, 2024, image courtesy of the collector Wu Wei. “The Discoveries booths are very interesting. They’re all newer artists, and there’s a lot of variety. Compared with the rest of the fair, they’re less conservative, and more tempting, the kind of thing that makes you want to buy.”

“For example, I thought the solo presentation of Huidi Xiang at Yve Yang was extremely soft and healing. I began collecting with moving-image works. The first piece I bought was an animation by Ding Shiwei. After that, I gradually started collecting installations and wall works by artists who also work with video. Broadly speaking, I’m drawn to conceptual and narrative perspectives. If something is too abstract, I have an almost reflexive lack of interest.” Phillida Reid booth. Wu Wei said this artist’s work was very interesting and hoped to keep following it in the future. Art Basel Hong Kong, 2024, image courtesy of the collector Wu Wei. “My purpose on this trip to Hong Kong was very clear. I work in fashion. Besides seeing exhibitions, I wanted to shop intensively and look at all kinds of stores.”

“As for the art, with many booths I only need to glance in passing; I don’t even have to go in to know it has nothing to do with me. I haven’t been collecting for very long, and my attitude is fairly relaxed. I’m mainly here to learn. Every year I have a very specific small budget. I can’t spread it around everywhere. I can only look at what I like. I like George Condo very much, for instance, but I feel he has nothing to do with me. First, he’s truly very expensive, and second, it’s almost impossible that our paths would ever cross. We’re not of the same era.”

“By contrast, to grow alongside an artist, whether in terms of the work or in time, can be marvelous. In my brief collecting life so far, I’ve become friends with the artists whose work I’ve bought. Personally, I think that’s very important.” Galeria Cayon booth, Art Basel Hong Kong, 2024. “The first time I came to Art Basel Hong Kong was in 2017, and apart from the two editions that were suspended for special reasons, I’ve come every year since.”

“By comparison, the galleries seemed more excited last year, mixed with a curiosity about reconnecting with the Asian market, especially the European and American galleries. They hadn’t had face-to-face contact with Asian collectors for a long time, so along with their expectations there was also some nervous observation and testing: how had the Asian art market developed over these past years, what new artists had emerged, whether collectors’ tastes had changed, and so on.” Hakgojae Gallery booth, Art Basel Hong Kong, 2024. “Some galleries were relatively confident and aggressive, so they came right away, while others were more cautious and waited a year to see.”

“Perhaps the response last year was strong because collectors had been pent up for several years without participating in international fairs and wanted to seize the chance to appreciate actual works in person, not just images and videos on their phones, so their actions were very active. This year, having seen the heat of the last edition, the galleries have finally all come. Participation has returned to more than 200 galleries, back to pre-disruption levels. But after a year of digestion, both the international environment and the economic situation have changed, so this year feels slightly cooler instead.”

Yoan Capote, Island (Volarg Rhythm), 2023-2024, and Endless Sea (Requiem), 2021, installation view at Art Basel Hong Kong, 2024. “But the quality and scale of the work this year are indeed very high. The public installation that left the deepest impression on me was Yoan Capote’s. From a distance it looks like a calm, ordinary sea; up close it becomes a churning undercurrent, with wave after wave made of hard fishhooks. The pressure is startling, and it seems to hint at the sudden upheavals of the current international situation.”

“I also looked through Discoveries, and I liked the Linseed booth quite a lot. First, the choice of medium was very unusual: works made with ceramic shards. The mode of expression was witty and humorous as well. The whole booth stood apart, with its own narrative and sense of time and space, and it was worth lingering over. I also liked the Nonaka Hill booth. A commercial gallery bringing a large-scale ceramic installation into a field of mostly wall works felt like a breath of fresh air.”

Nonaka Hill booth, the gallery’s first participation in Art Basel, Art Basel Hong Kong, 2024. “I arrived last Friday. Over the weekend I mainly went to openings at commercial galleries. My favorite was Wolfgang Tillmans’s solo show at David Zwirner. Besides that, Gagosian’s Andy Warhol exhibition, Christie’s solo show of Liu Ye, MDC’s solo show of Yan Pei-Ming, White Cube’s solo show of Louise Giovonelli, and Perrotin’s solo show of Izumi Kato were all very good.”

Willa Wasserman, Still Life With Allium Mirror, Sharps & Rose II, 2024, one of the works Alda especially favored. Works by I Gusti Ayu Kadek Murniasih, an Indonesian woman artist, now deceased, whom Alda discovered for the first time at the fair; as a woman artist living in Indonesia in the 1960s, her work felt strikingly advanced and avant-garde. “Collecting art has something in common with other kinds of spending: even if you set a limit in your mind and repeat eight hundred times that you must not go over, when you encounter something you truly love, you still can’t help buying it.”

“But over the past year or two I’ve become calmer and calmer. Sometimes, if you wait patiently, you may find an unexpected surprise.” A 2023 work by the artist Etienne Chambaud, with gold leaf as the ground, was another piece Alda admired. Ota Fine Arts booth, Art Basel Hong Kong, 2024. Maria Farrar, Lost Keys to Everything, 2024. Alda was delighted to find herself waiting successfully for a new 2024 work by Farrar, an artist represented by Ota Fine Arts. “Don’t narrow your gaze too much. Often you’ll come across something even more suitable, something you like better. So I didn’t rush; I kept a level attitude. As a result, this time I discovered two artists I hadn’t known before, both excellent, and unexpectedly managed to wait for a very rare painting. A double piece of good fortune. I’m very pleased.”

“So you really do have to approach it with an ordinary heart. Perhaps fate will come knocking on its own.” The fair that set the whole city buzzing: this year Art Basel Hong Kong enters its second decade, and for the first time Basel has consolidated all of its public programming into one public zone, allowing people without tickets to encounter art as well. Among the 10 free screenings in Film, particularly worth noting are Qiu Jiongjiong’s feature A New Old Play, Wong Ping’s animated short Sorry for the Late Reply, Sex, once performed by the German artist Anne Imhof at Tate, and Yang Yuanyuan’s Chinatown Cha-Cha, on Chinese American performers in San Francisco.

Qiu Jiongjiong, A New Old Play, 2021. During Art Week, five Conversations panels brought together Haegue Yang, Shinro Ohtake, Takashi Murakami, the veteran collector Uli Sigg, Suhanya Raffel, the director of M+, and Pi Li, head of art at Tai Kwun, for public discussions. The fair itself has also intensified its collaboration with local cultural institutions, including the cluster of blue-chip galleries at H Queen’s, as well as M+, the Palace Museum, and Tai Kwun. Younger, more experimental art districts and spaces, such as Wong Chuk Hang and Para Site’s street-facing spaces, have also mounted exhibitions and events as part of “Basel time.”

Yang Fudong, Sparrow on the Sea, still, 2024. By the time we left the fair, night had fallen. Standing in the sea breeze along Victoria Harbour, we could still see, across the water, the artist Yang Fudong’s newest black-and-white film projected on the M+ facade. The film, Sparrow on the Sea, was shot on location in Hong Kong. Its images include both the prosperous city streets of Hong Kong as an Asian financial center and scenes recalling the city’s former life as a small fishing village by the sea. The mixture of old and new stirred an unaccountable nostalgia, as if for something half remembered.

In that moment, the assertive shell of contemporary art seemed suddenly to fall away, revealing something inward and human, bound to the city and to emotional experience. As Yang Fudong put it, it is “like a short poem, blending Hong Kong’s past and present, allowing a glimpse of an unpredictable future.” Some images courtesy of Art Basel Hong Kong.