Inside Art Basel
Art Basel in Hong Kong continues to go from strength to strength, with this year’s edition featuring a host of new galleries and museum-quality installations
A sector-by-sector guide to the fair, which features a host of new galleries and museum-quality installations
‘‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” may well be the attitude of the organisers behind Art Basel in Hong Kong, given its continuing success. Now in its seventh year in the city, the fair returns this month with another stellar line-up of galleries—242 of them—and an ambitious programme of powerful films and hard-hitting talks.
As in previous years, the fair is divided into seven sectors: Galleries, Discoveries, Insights, Kabinett, Encounters, Film and Conversations. But that’s not to say there won’t be surprises for return visitors. Twenty-one galleries are participating this year for the first time, including a string of powerful American and European galleries that have long set the agenda in their home countries but are now venturing into Asia.
Among these are Galerie Max Hetzler from Germany, New York’s Paula Cooper Gallery and Galerie Greta Meert from Belgium. The latter is presenting a particularly ambitious show that pairs the works of leading minimalist artists, including Fred Sandback, Robert Mangold and Sol Lewitt, with works by two younger Belgian artists, Edith Dekyndt and Pieter Vermeersch. And that’s just a taste of what is taking place at this year’s fair, which features everything from anime-inspired Japanese art to paintings by Picasso.
GALLERIES
There is something for everyone in this particular sector, which brings together 196 of the world’s leading galleries. New paintings and installations by rising star Eddie Peake are on show in Galleria Lorcan O’neill’s booth, while Eslite Gallery is exhibiting sprawling realist oil paintings by renowned Mainland Chinese contemporary artist Liu Xiaodong. Anyone looking for historic works should head to Richard Nagy, which is showing erotic drawings made by Egon Schiele in the early 20th century.
INSIGHTS
Looking for some local flavour? Head to the Insights sector, which features carefully curated exhibitions by artists from the Asia-pacific region, with 21 galleries participating this year. These include Hong Kong-based Empty Gallery, which is exhibiting the work of Tishan Hsu, a New York-based artist who was a star of the art scene in the 1980s and 1990s but totally dropped out of the public eye in the 2000s. Empty Gallery is now putting him back in the spotlight, showing past works in its booth at the fair and never-beforeseen new works in its gallery space in Aberdeen. Another standout booth is Bank gallery’s exhibition of minimalist paintings by Taiwanese artist Richard Lin, who died in 2011, shown alongside works by his nephew Michael Lin, a rising star of the country’s art scene.