But back in the country’s capital city, at the historic 798 Art District, it was business as usual with the launch of the eighth edition of Gallery Weekend Beijing. Running from May 28 to June 2, 2024, with a VIP preview in the days before the event’s opening, Gallery Weekend Beijing this year included 27 participating galleries and nonprofit institutions in the main sector, and 8 galleries from locales beyond the city in the visiting sector, plus “The inner side of the wind,” a show curated by Yuan Jiawei.

This year, Gallery Weekend Beijing, as well as the city’s two major art fairs, Beijing Dangdai and Jingart, all held their openings at the same time, drawing a larger crowd to the city in the hopes of reigniting flagging excitement surrounding Beijing’s art scene, according to industry insiders.

The main theme for this year’s Gallery Weekend Beijing, or GWBJ as it’s known for short, was “Drift to Re-Turn.” It encapsulated the international artistic connections that participating galleries, institutions, and curated projects aimed to create through the annual showcase.  

Speaking to ARTnews, GWBJ program director Yang Jialin said, “On a deeper level, GWBJ, as a platform for contemporary art exchange, hopes to help the outstanding artists and their work ‘drift’ out to the world, allowing the voices from Beijing to reach the international stage; and to let excellent international art content ‘return’ to the local art scene, presenting it to the Chinese audience.”

Victor Wang, chief curator and artistic director of M Woods, a private museum at 798 Art District, said, “Unlike Hong Kong and Shanghai, Beijing’s art ecology operates uniquely through a mix of connections and disconnections with the outside world.”

The city’s scale, legacy, and structure provide the opportunity for some galleries and institutions to thrive in isolation, building frameworks that benefit from this separateness. Meanwhile, others continue to actively seek connections with the global art scene, striving to create bridges and establish networks beyond Beijing.

“I’m personally uplifted whenever I see marginalized voices and radical thinkers presented in Beijing, in dialogue with this local cultural context, especially those perspectives we might not be able to showcase or engage with often locally,” Wang added.

One such exhibition was tucked away in a small private room at Magician Space. The quietly provocative show is paradoxically titled “Room of Boundlessness” and is curated by Liu Ding, one of the artistic directors of Yokohama Triennale 2023. Upon first look, there seemed to be nothing contentious: viewers were greeted by nothing much at all, with the artworks left facedown on the floor or propped against the wall. That, it turned out, was just the beginning of the show. Visitors were invited to pick up the works, by the likes of Hu Shangzong and Feng Guodong, and hang the pieces themselves.

“Our objective is to offer both local and international audiences the opportunity to engage with diverse forms of art and contribute to the overall artistic ecosystem,” said Pojan Huang, researcher at Magician Space. By way of example, Huang cited the dedicated project called the Antechamber, which was designed specifically for experimental art.

Magician Space also presented a solo exhibition running till July by New York–based artist Timur Si-Qin. The show, which explores the relationship between humans and nature from different perspectives, including a spiritual one, proved particularly popular.

Some quality exhibitions, stunning artist studios, and frenetic programming aside, there were still concerns regarding the volatile climate of geopolitics and fiscal uncertainties in China and beyond.

“In the current global landscape, the first layer of meaning of the theme of GWBJ is its literal sense: we are always in an unstable state, with an uncertain future,” said Jialin.

Just a few months ago, Bloomberg reported that China faced a series of challenges from shrinking population to record property downturn to rising trade tensions. Amid conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, and with trade wars ongoing, the global economy looks precarious, and China is not an exception. In fact, as tensions with the US ratchet up, Chinese businesses are reportedly looking toward countries such as Mexico and Vietnam.

“The art market is not optimistic in light of the ongoing deterioration of geopolitics and the decline of the global economic situation,” Huang said. “A cold wave is approaching not only China, but also the global gallery industry, making future prospects for the art business increasingly challenging.”

“Certainly, the days of quick sales and waiting lists are waning,” said Mathieu Borysevicz, founder and director of BANK, a Shanghai gallery that participated in GWBJ. “Right now, everybody has sobered up and is working a lot harder to make each sale. China is still the second-largest art market in the world, and the economy is resilient, but it has created a widespread sense of precarity. In fact, I must say that in my 20-plus years of coming to China, this is the first time I have witnessed widespread pessimism.”

Yet there remains cause for some optimism—or at least artistic resilience.

“Usually, when the economy isn’t so great, art tends to get more interesting,” Borysevicz added. “For too long, the emphasis was disproportionately on the market at the expense of criticality. I hope the shift away from the market will help vitalize the work.”

Huang agreed, saying, “When Magician Space was established in 2008, it coincided with the economic crisis, and the exhibition was not conceived for commercial purposes, thus our objectives extend beyond business. It has been a source of great satisfaction to continue delving deeply into the work of our favourite artists and to persevere.”

Meanwhile, other industry leaders are paying more attention to their regional counterparts.

“Connecting local artists and the Beijing art scene with international communities is crucial—especially now, given the growing skepticism toward globalization and the current economic and geopolitical climate,” Wang said. “It’s awesome to see our colleagues and communities from South Korea, Japan, Singapore, and other countries perambulating 798, experiencing firsthand our institutions and galleries, and seeing what Beijing has to offer.”

Nonetheless, ahead of the opening of Art Basel Hong Kong this coming week, the city’s art market and its increasingly mature web of art infrastructure seem undeterred thus far, with a renewed frenetic pace of expansions, programming, and international engagement, since last year, even amid signs of China’s economic slowdown. 

“Despite reports of China’s economic woes, the art market in Hong Kong appears resilient and even thriving,” ABHK director Angelle Siyang-Le, who will be helming her first edition of the fair this year, told ARTnews. “Hong Kong as a city has a long-established and reliable infrastructure, a strategic location in the relative center of Asia, tax-free benefits, and still holds its status as the leading international arts hub in the region.”

For the very first time in four years, Art Basel Hong Kong, which runs from March 26–30, is back to its pre-pandemic size, with 243 galleries from 40 countries, increasing the exhibitor count by 37 percent compared to last year. While a few leading galleries, like Marian Goodman and Sean Kelly, that exhibited in 2019 are not returning for this edition, the fair has brought on 25 first-time exhibitors from various countries including Denmark, Ghana, New Zealand, Portugal, and Saudi Arabia.

The mega art fair also seems to be banking on the city’s positioning as the gateway to mainland China, with an increase in off-site programming to include conversations in Shanghai and Guangzhou.

“These discussions cover topics such as the digital art market in China, the evolution of the Greater Bay Area’s arts ecosystem, and efforts to create alternative art sites and structures in Hong Kong,” Siyang-Le said. “We hope these conversations continue to cement Art Basel Hong Kong as a leader in the space, further deepening the show’s strong dialogue with its host city and region, as is seen across all Art Basel shows.”

Other key art industry players and institutions are also gearing up for this year’s Hong Kong Art Week.

West Kowloon Cultural District Authority (WKCDA) is hosting the first-ever Hong Kong International Cultural Summit, from March 24–26. Titled “Connecting Culture, Bridging Times,” the Summit aims to be the largest international cultural conference staged in Hong Kong in recent years, supporting the city’s development into “the East-meets-West center for international cultural exchange,” according to WKCDA’s chief executive Betty Fung.

In an email interview with ARTnews, Fung connected the “flourishing art scene” in Hong Kong with the “successive openings of the flagship arts and cultural facilities in the past years, particularly the two world-class museums, M+ and Hong Kong Palace Museum, in WKCD in 2021 and 2022, respectively, as well as other cultural institutions such as Tai Kwun and the renovated Hong Kong Museum of Art.”

Additionally, according to WKCDA, nearly 700,000 square feet of office and retail, dining, and entertainment space will be available when the Artist Square Towers project is completed in 2026. However, Fung told local media outlets earlier this year that WKCDA would run out of funding next March if the government does not approve its new finance plan.

Hong Kong’s influential real estate conglomerates have also amped up their presence in the art scene. Henderson Land Development Company Limited is presenting an exhibition of diverse regional artists titled “Collected Light: From Legacy to Future” that is curated by Vera Lam, the director of the Hong Kong nonprofit arts organization HART and a former curator at M+. The show is inspired by the company’s latest development, the Henderson, that is designed by Zara Hadid Architects and slated to open later this year. The company has also commissioned local artists Elaine Chiu and Zoie Lam to create a 721-foot-long mural titled, Realising Central Cityscapes, at its New Central Harbourfront Site 3 Project.

While most aspiring or established art capitals tend to have a surge of activity around the time of a new or expanded art fair edition, over the past few years, Hong Kong has witnessed a concerted surge in the auction market and gallery sector, despite its beleaguered state. 

In 2021, Christie’s announced plans to take over four floors—and 50,000 square feet—at the Henderson this fall. Last year, Phillips moved into new, expanded premises in the West Kowloon Cultural District, next to M+. The auction house even launched a new café this month. And, Sotheby’s will also be moving to its brand-new headquarters at the upcoming Six Pacific Place in Hong Kong, a stone’s throw away from its year-round exhibition space, both set to open later this year.

This January saw mega gallery Hauser & Wirth moving to a new street-level, 10,000-square-foot space in Hong Kong’s central business district, down the road from their original premises on two uppers of the high-rise H-Queen’s, one of the city’s famed art gallery clusters. “It was incredible to experience the enthusiastic response to our new space in Hong Kong from the art community and beyond,” Hauser & Wirth president Marc Payot told ARTnews. “Hong Kong has an undeniable dynamism and a highly engaged and enlightened audience for art.”

Payot said that enthusiasm is what led the gallery to double down on its presence in Hong Kong. “Hong Kong is a long-established and vibrant art and cultural hub, with undeniable advantages, from its geographical location that connects to wider Asia to the language advantage of English being widely spoken. Even during pandemic, the city didn’t stop moving forward,” he said.

Global art market players aside, on the local front, new spaces proliferated in 2021 and 2022 such as Double Q Gallery by local collector Queenie Rosita Law; Property Holdings Development Group (PHD Group) by former De Sarthe director Willem Molesworth and his wife, Ysabelle Cheung, the former managing editor of ArtAsiaPacific; and Odds and Ends by Natalie Ng and Fiona Ho, formerly of David Zwirner and the recently closed Gallery HZ, respectively.

Odds and Ends itself is expanding, moving to a new space in Sheung Wan this month. Its inaugural exhibition will feature women artists, who recently graduated from Baptist University Hong Kong, as will its booth at Art Central, the satellite fair that takes place alongside ABHK.

“We wish to inject freshness and introduce new talents to respective markets—young Hong Kong artists who just graduated to an international crowd which flocks to the city during March,” cofounder Ho said of Odds and Ends.

Nonetheless, the Guardian reported this week that a number of artists “no longer feel safe working in Hong Kong” and have left the city, amid concerns about the state and cultural institutions censoring works. This includes artist duo Lumlong and Kacey Wong. The new security law provisions may inadvertently heighten these concerns.

Even still, one of the most talked about exhibitions during last year’s edition of ABHK was “Myth Makers–Spectrosynthesis III” at Tai Kwun, which was organized by collector Patrick Sun and his Sunpride Foundation. Sun told ARTnews that many visitors who dropped by the exhibition focusing on LGBTQ artists from Asia and its diasporas were “pleasantly surprised to see such a ‘daring’ exhibition with a queer theme being presented at a major public institution here.”

He added, “I’m glad that in some small ways our exhibition seemed to have helped assure visitors that Hong Kong remains a city that celebrates diversity and equality.”

Ho agreed, “The spirit and eagerness of the people here are what keep us going strong. This also contributes to the open-mindedness of Hong Kong residents, who are always excited and supportive about new ventures and ideas, making us an ideal place in Asia to have a presence.”

This week, Hauser & Wirth opened a new street-level gallery space in Hong Kong’s central business district with an inaugural exhibition featuring stunning new works by Chinese artist Zhang Enli.

The blue-chip gallery, which first opened in the city in 2018, moved down the road, from their original premises on the 15th and 16th floors in the famed art gallery cluster at H Queen’s to a three-floor, 10,000-square-foot space designed by Selldorf Architects on 8 Queen’s Road Central, at the main road’s junction with the historic Ice House Street, and Duddell Street.

The gallery’s new space is definitely a sight to behold even for pedestrians going by, with Enli’s incandescently colorful gestural paintings displayed throughout the ground floor. The works were specifically chosen for the show to reflect the artist’s progression to looser and more liberated brushwork that has been a hallmark of his practice as of late.

“We deliberately sought out a space that maximizes the exposure to the public through ground-floor access, so the gallery is welcoming for the highly engaged audience for art in the city,” Hauser & Wirth president Iwan Wirth told ARTnews during the gallery’s opening week. “The location in Hong Kong was very carefully selected and is ideal because it allows us to remain closely connected to the community of galleries and institutions in Central.”

Nearby street-level galleries in the vicinity include WOAW Gallery, Opera Gallery, and Lévy Gorvy Dayan, as well as David Zwirner and Tang Contemporary Art, both of which are still located in the H Queen’s building.

The trend to street-level galleries is recent, as such prime real estate has historically been rare for art commercial galleries in Hong Kong. “To have street level art gallery space—especially on the scale of Hauser & Wirth’s new premises—is something most other international art hubs take for granted, but it’s a big deal in Hong Kong,” said Rosanna Herries, a Hong Kong–based cultural communications consultant who attended the gallery’s crowded opening on Wednesday. “For art appreciating audiences in the city, it is exciting to have a gallery with such sophisticated exhibition programming committing so firmly to accessibility to, and visibility for, their artists.”

Yet the question remains why Hong Kong now? In addition to expanding their respective Asia teams, Christie’s is moving its Asia-Pacific headquarters into a 50,000-square-foot, four-story space in the Henderson building in the central district later this year; Phillips moved into new, expanded premises next to the new M+ museum in the West Kowloon Cultural District in March 2023, coinciding with the first travel restrictions-free Art Basel Hong Kong; and Sotheby’s will also soon be moving into the brand-new Six Pacific Place in Admiralty, a short distance away from the auction house’s newly announced year-round exhibition space.

All this activity is especially curious given the launch of new fairs in Seoul and Tokyo and the movement of wealth during the pandemic which seemed to temporarily bolster Singapore’s status as a rising art capital over Hong Kong. Interestingly, Hauser & Wirth has so far not participated in Singapore’s relatively nascent international art fair ART SG, the second edition of which took place the week before the opening of Hauser & Wirth’s latest gallery space.

For Elaine Kwok, the gallery’s managing partner for Asia, Hong Kong’s history as a thriving art scene is the clear draw: “Hong Kong’s flourishing art scene has long attracted artists, collectors, curators, and enthusiasts from around the world. It is an established and vibrant art and cultural hub, so this relocation reaffirms our commitment not only in Hong Kong but also to the wider region.”

She added, “We are very positive about Asia. Hauser & Wirth was active in the region for decades before opening our first space in Hong Kong in 2018, and we look forward to many more years of engagement and growth ahead.”

Lawrence Van Hagen, who founded his art advisory business LVH Art in 2016 and works with clients in Paris, London, and Hong Kong, noted the highly energetic commercial art gallery scene in the city, especially since it reopened to international visitors last March.

“The Hong Kong art gallery scene is very much oriented toward helping build the collections of buyers within Hong Kong and the surrounding regions,” Van Hagen told ARTnews. “Notably, in Hong Kong there are no import charges on art, and it is easy to ship works to and from the city, making it a very competitive atmosphere for collectors to buy and for galleries to exhibit.”

Kwok said the gallery’s “clients who are active here not only come from Hong Kong and across Asia, but also from further afield, especially during the annual Art Basel Hong Kong moment.”

Though Enli was the first Asian artist to join Hauser & Wirth’s roster, back in 2006, the gallery has never mounted an exhibition for him in Asia, but he has been widely exhibited at its spaces in New York, London, Zurich, and Somerset, England. He’s also had several high-profile museum exhibitions in mainland China, including the now defunct Long Museum, the He Art Museum, and Power Station of Art Shanghai.

“We’ve simply been waiting for the perfect moment to exhibit his work with a fantastic show in Hong Kong,” Wirth said. “The inauguration of a new space here—a significant milestone for us in Asia—seemed the ideal opportunity.”

Last year saw a 14 percent year-on-year decline in sales across mainland China and Hong Kong, according to the most recent Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report. Though sales in the region were still 13 percent above 2020 at $11.2 billion, it was the second lowest total since 2009 and the report found that auction sales dipped in Japan, South Korea, and other smaller markets internationally in 2022.

Given that, it was altogether surprising when market indicators this year revealed a wholly different shift for the wildly diverse Asia region.

In November, the 2023 Survey of Global Collection by Art Basel and UBS reported that, in the first half of this year, collectors from mainland China had the highest median expenditure of all collectors, at $241,000. That figure was a sharp increase over the previous two years. Meanwhile, in Southeast Asia, Indonesia’s homegrown art fair Art Jakarta rolled out a well-attended edition at its new venue and time slot from November 17 to 19, while Art Fair Philippines returned for its tenth edition in February with 63 exhibitors, an increase from 46 last year. The country’s leading gallery, SILVERLENS, expanded with an outpost in New York last July.

It is safe to say that the regional art market has been buoyed by a sense of confidence, hunger for disruption, and deep pockets. It was exactly this atmosphere in 2021 that allowed NFTs and related technologies to become so popular in various parts of Asia beginning, with young tech entrepreneurs making their first forays into the art market, changing the very ethos of buying art in the region, for better or worse.

While techno-optimism remains especially prevalent in major capitals like Seoul, Hong Kong, and Singapore, such a mindset tends to engender wilful ignorance towards the various pressures floating in the background, such as growing censorship and social inequities, geopolitical conflicts, and the looming climate crisis. These issues were clearly showing amidst ambitious efforts to expand or innovate this year.

To that end, here are five major trends that stood out in Asia’s art market and institutional landscape in 2023.  

An ancient city that once serving as the country’s capital throughout 10 dynasties, nearby Nanjing, widely known for its picturesque fall foliage, offers a far more languid, contemplative pace, as compared to the classic Blade Runner–type capital cities of Asia. Most notably, the city has over 60 museums spanning history, art, culture, archaeology, and textiles, amid looming mountains and skyscrapers.

Among these are Nanjing’s first contemporary art museum, Sifang Art Museum, founded in 2005 and home to the eclectic international contemporary art collection of Lu Xun; the Golden Eagle Museum of Art, the famous “hanging private art museum” founded in 2020; and the not-to-be-missed Nanjing Museum with its intensely popular and expertly curated ongoing special exhibition exploring the 3,000-year history of jade.

A new addition to this slew of diverse cultural offerings is the Deji Art Museum, strategically located on the eighth floor of Deji Plaza Phase II in Xinjiekou, which bills itself as “China’s No.1 Business Circle” and has been designed as a sort of cultural axis or “museum mile” for the city.

The museum primarily showcases works collected by Wu Tiejun, founder of the Deji Group and a new addition to the ARTnews Top 200 Collectors list, which owns and operates the Deji Plaza development. The museum collection, spanning thousands of years, is divided into ancient Chinese art, the art of Jinling (the ancient name for Nanjing), and modern and contemporary art from China and beyond.

Tapping on the expansive historicity of Wu’s collection, the Deji Art Museum recently opened “Nothing Still About Still Lifes: Three Centuries of Floral Compositions,” which runs until March 2024. The blockbuster exhibition explores the evolution of modern and contemporary art in East and West from the second half of the 19th century to present day, through the presentation of over 100 works focusing on floral compositions.

Speaking with ARTnews at her office above Deji Art Museum, director Ai Lin described the viewing experience of the exhibition as “listening to a dialogue between East and West.”

She continued, “In traditional Chinese art, we mostly will see landscapes, birds, mountains, and flowers. In Western paintings, there is also a focus on a lot of still landscapes. So, there is some kind of connection between both sides exploring the relationship between people and their (physical) surroundings. Floral composition specifically is the kind of topic we could see a lot of connections, connections between nature and human beings and art itself.”

For art historian Joachim Pissarro, the exhibition’s guest curator, it was important that the exhibition and its accompanying catalogue do away with the idea that floral still lifes are only found in European painting traditions. “What we have done is establish a series of dialogues between East and West,” he said. “We were interested in recreating those dialogues, which had never been shown. That’s the uniqueness of the exhibition—you have many exhibitions of floral still lifes before, but you’ve never had one constantly able to go back and forth between East and West.”

The sections of “Nothing Still About Still Lifes” that best epitomize this sense of conversation open the exhibition and are aptly titled “Cross-Pollination” and “Avant-Gardening.” Claude Monet’s 1878 Fleurs dans un pot (Roses et brouillard), Pablo Picasso’s Vase de fleurs (1901), and Piet Mondrian’s Chrysanthemum (1909) are presented alongside works like Pan Yuliang’s Bouquet de Chrysanthèmes Roses (1944) and more recent pieces like Wu Guanzhong’s Lilac (1991) and Sa Dji’s The Prosperity of Life (1991–93).

Yet, the works that steal the show are by artists from China and other parts of Asia. These pieces confidently resonate with history, artistic ambition, and even palpable emotion, much more so than the works on view by their Western counterparts. For example, Liliac, which hammered at $2.5 million dollar at a China Guardian auction in Hong Kong in 2021, is a poignant oil painting that is said to be a visual love poem by Wu Guanzhong for his afflicted wife.

Despite showcasing works such as Jeff Koons’s sculpture Wall Relief with Bird (1991) and Andy Warhol’s Flowers (1964), the exhibition notably suffers from a lack of potency in its contemporary sections by Western artists, but this could be due to the nature and development of the Deji Art Museum collection itself.

When discussing the direction for the museum and collection over the next five years, Lin said there is still much more work to do in terms of their contemporary collection: “We actually took 30 years to build the ancient collection, and we took 10 years to build the contemporary collection, so we still have a lot of different contemporary works to collect and exhibit.” 

One of the key objectives of “Nothing Still About Still Lifes” is to bring to light issues facing humanity, specifically the ecological crisis, by highlighting aspects of our physical landscape via artworks spanning centuries. This is also an overarching focus for Deji Art Museum as it intends to further explore the relationship between human society and nature via the showcase of its collection to the general public.

To that end, the museum’s next exhibition intends to present works by famed digital artist Beeple, including his 2023 sculpture S.2122, which the museum bought for $9 million at Art Basel Hong Kong earlier this year. The work showcases a building complex seemingly from the future, with hovering drones and mushrooms, floating in a sea of water.

“The museum collection contains our own history and culture, but we have to look into future development of society as human beings ourselves, so we have to also look into such issues and present it with our collections,” said Lin, “That’s why we choose to make this art museum as a floor [in Deji Plaza], not a single lonely building.”

She continued, “A lot of people in China already know that when they visit a new city, they need to go to the museum, to maybe to see some history, or maybe to see the future. So, for right now we choose to create an art museum which is easy to access and try to give people a new way to think—to give them space to broaden their thinking.”

Held in Japan’s most picturesque, historically rich, and conservative city, ACK has enjoyed a positive reception from attendees across the region since its debut in 2021, primarily because of its promise of a less frenetic platform.

“The Japanese art scene—with rich history that dates back thousands of years—has always been dynamic and thriving, but we are conscious that it has been (re)gaining more international attention in recent years, thanks to the new generation of artists, collectors, and arts professionals that bring fresh and global perspectives to the scene,” Yukako Yamashita, ACK’s Program Director, told ARTnews.

“We are mindful that it’s important to continue this momentum to further elevate the art scene globally, but we must do so in a thoughtful way that does not compromise the quality and sincerity of what we have to offer. This mindset is very much reflected in how we operate ACK,” she added.

In this vein, ACK’s trademark feature involves each Japanese host gallery sharing a booth with an international collaborator of their choice. The last edition presented works by 64 galleries sharing 35 booths, comprising tall wooden walls similar to open crates at a warehouse, rendering an already small showcase even more refreshingly intimate and focused.

This year, ACK welcomed 33 new exhibitors, including leading international galleries like 47 Canal, Almine Rech, Flower Gallery, Karma, and Mendes Wood DM. “We have great ambitions to grow our audiences internationally and contribute to Kyoto’s art community, but we don’t want to rush anything,” said Yamashita. 

The Gallery Collaborations section paired 27 international galleries with 26 galleries from Japan, while ACK’s other gallery section, Kyoto Meetings, featured 11 presentations of works by artists related to the city.

According to fair organizers, ACK doubled their physical footprint with its latest edition, while maintaining the number of exhibitors, with the intention to make the halls less crowded for both visitors and exhibitors. The expanded space also accommodated programs with partners, like Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group whose “MUFG Kogei Project” showcased artisans who used traditional techniques to make modern-day objects with high levels of craftsmanship. 

While a few collectors from Europe and the US said they found the overall layout less overstimulating than that of other fairs, this year’s increased physical space did not necessarily translate into the fair’s undeniably unique selling point, according to several international visitors and industry insiders who ARTnews spoke with on the ground.

“The previous iteration of the fair appeared to exhibit a more consistent curatorial approach. The smaller scale and a more cohesive curation of the fair space were aspects that garnered success,” said Natalia Dawid, a Tokyo-based director for Pearl Lam Galleries, which did not participate in the fair.

Last year’s Public Program section, curated by Jam Acuzar, a Tokyo-based curator from the Philippines, also took the fair’s layout into account, with the walking space between the booths used to create a more mediative and impactful art fair experience; 60 layers of sound artist Miyu Hosoi’s voice played in an otherworldly manner on speakers running on either side. This year’s Public Program, curated by Waseda University professor Greg Dvorak, took a different approach. Under the title “Beyond Glitch: Remapping Reality in a Broken World,” a slew of installations, in various negative spaces across the exhibition hall, created a more cluttered experience.

“The presence of engaging surprises last year—such as outdoor installations that invited us to explore, and to revel in the beauty of nearby surroundings and landscapes—was missed this time,” added Dawid, who noted several highlights outside the fair, including a Harold Ancart solo exhibition at the Contemporary Art Foundation and a Zazen session led by Vice Abbot Ito Toryo at the Ryosoku-in Temple, which she said “elevated the spiritual quotient.”

Nonetheless, a particular standout group display that impressed visitors with its “special circular theme” could be found at the booth of Taiwan’s major contemporary art gallery TKG+ and its host Japanese gallery ShugoArts.

“The circular form at first glance, serves as a window linking artists from both galleries together, which successfully attracted many attentions,” said TKG+ director Shelly Wu, who recently joined the ACK selection committee. “Michael Lin’s round table installation not only symbolizes people coming together but also cleverly incorporates Taiwanese floral patterns, creating a dialogue between cultural memory and contemporary art. Jane Lee offers insights of her Kyoto impression and Japanese culture, creating a unique work surrounding the theme of nature and human interaction.”

However, based on sales highlights shared by fair organizers and the rare few galleries, it does seem that Japanese artists and galleries sold more works than their international counterparts.

In the Gallery Collaborations section, the internationally renowned Mizuma Art Gallery (based in Tokyo and with a location in Singapore) and Australian gallery Sullivan+Strumpf sold several works by Miyanaga Aiko, each priced in the range of ¥385,000 to ¥550,000 (around $2,500 to $3,600). Tokyo’s Kotaro Nukaga and blue-chip gallery Almine Rech sold a 9.5-foot-by-6.75-foot painting by Tomokazu Matsuyamato to an Asian collector, while Misako & Rosen (Tokyo) and 47 Canal (New York) sold four paintings by Trevor Shimizu for a total of $200,000.

By the end of the first preview day, Charles Fong, a Hong Kong–based director of Rossi & Rossi, shared that he had not sold any works by Thai artist Mit Jai Inn presented at the ACK booth, but his partnering Japanese gallerist Yoshiaki-san had sold a few photographs.

Galleries presenting local artists in the Kyoto Meetings section, however, saw brisk sales. Art Court Gallery sold several works by Yoshioka Chihiro, each work in the price range of ¥60,000 to ¥70,000 ($395 to $461). Taguchi Fine Art sold 13 works by Shigeru Nishikawa for approximately ¥6.6 million ($43,500) in total. Taguchi Fine Art also saw 14 works by Shigeru Nishikawa sell for an approximate total amount of ¥5.5 million ($36,000). Tezukayama Gallery sold a painting by Atsuchi Tomoko for ¥550,000 ($3,600) and several works by Hirano Yasuko in the range of ¥132,000 to ¥550,000 ($870 to $3,600) each.

In contrast, Karma sold 10 works from its booth to several Japanese, Chinese, and American collectors. Neugerriemschneider sold a work by Olafur Eliasson to a Japanese collector. Back at the Gallery Collaborations section, Taro Nasu and Galerie Eva Presenhuber sold Untitled (Sarvisalo, Finland, Apple Blossom Petals 9) by Sam Falls for $93,500, and PREFER CRYING IN A LIMO TO LAUGHING IN A BUS by John Giorno for $49,500. Tokyo mainstay SCAI The Bathouse and Antwerp’s Axel Vervoordt sold a painting by Bosco Sodi for over $100,000 to a Japanese collector.

Ultimately, it seems the selling point of the fair is not necessarily to actually sell, even for participating art dealers travelling with their wares from across the world.

“With a strong turnout from the region, we were able to gain new clients and introduce collectors to our program,” said Jack Eisenberg, a director at LA’s Matthew Brown Gallery. “With the help of [Blum’s Tokyo-based] team, we had very productive conversations even when there was a language barrier.”

Fong, of Rossi & Rossi, agreed, “This is our second year with ACK, and from my point of view, the main collaboration aspect helps us with connecting with people that we otherwise would not have known—mainly due to the language barrier.”

Correction, October 31, 2023: An earlier version of this story misstated who organized this year’s public programs at ACK. It was Greg Dvorak, not Jam Acuzar, who organized the 2022 public programs.

In a city charged with an almost neurotic intensity to make up for lost time—Hong Kong even went ahead with its landmark Credit Suisse three-day investment conference last week amid the bank’s sale to UBS, Art Basel’s main sponsor—Phillips’ opening stood out amid the various exhibitions, press conferences, parties, and dinners, organized during the past week.

Spanning over 52,000 square feet across six floors, Phillips is supposedly the first international auction house to establish a purpose-built saleroom and gallery space in the city. This is part of the company’s plans “to shake up the sale calendar,” Phillips CEO Stephen Brooks told ARTnews.

Alongside spring and fall marquee auctions, the house will begin staging more sales in Hong Kong, including some mid-season auctions. There will also be slew of program throughout the year, including a selling exhibition in late April dedicated to Yayoi Kusama and Chiharu Shiota, as well as a non-selling exhibition collaborating with Asia-based collectors to display their works.

Highly reflective of the position auction houses occupy in today’s art eco-system, Phillips is located right next to M+ Museum, another recent and widely anticipated addition to Hong Kong’s cultural landscape that also happens to be hosting Kusama’s first retrospective in greater China. (The new headquarters are located in a building designed by famed Swiss architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron, which also worked on M+ Museum.)

These developments come just eight years after Phillips held its first auctions in Hong Kong; by comparison Sotheby’s is currently celebrating 50 years in the special administrative region. “In that short amount of time, there has been a true transformation of the playing field. It now comes as no surprise that the highest value lot in our long history—a masterwork by Jean-Michel Basquiat—came from the collection of Yusaku Maezawa and was sold to another collector based in Asia for $85 million,” Brooks said.

The auction house, which is owned by Russia’s Mercury Group and faced buyout rumors last year, reported in December that 34 precent of its auction sales in 2022 came from clients based in Asia. Additionally, Asian clients also accounted for significant activity in the company’s overseas sales, garnering over 30 percent of transactional activity in their New York sales and over 20 percent in their Geneva sales last year.

However, the company’s annual statement in December revealed that Hong Kong’s auction and private sales of art and luxury items dropped from HKD $2.1 billion (around $270 million) in 2021 to HK $1.3 billion ($167 million) in 2022, which was consistent with a contraction in sales across all major auction houses in the Asia Pacific region last year.

For now, auction houses remain unfazed in their efforts to double down on Asia, but the question remains: with the rise of aspiring art capitals across the region, why Hong Kong?

Most industry insiders agree that Hong Kong has a more flexible market compared with other Asian cities, in terms of its free-trade status, comprehensive legal system with low corruption, freeport policies, low taxes, and long-established and reliable infrastructure, as well as strategic and convenient location in the center of Asia.

Local art collector Alan Lo said, “Hong Kong may no longer be the New York of Asia, but it is definitely becoming the Monaco of Asia, where people come to spend money on building art collections, super yachts, Michelin star meals, crazy expensive Burgundy wines, and mansions on the Peak.”

He continued, “In terms of where people put their assets that’s a different story. Singapore is looking very favorable, especially [in comparison] to mainland Chinese, owing to a very similar lifestyle as Hong Kong and also because Mandarin Chinese is spoken as one of the mother tongues.”

When asked about whether the auction house is applying for licenses to conduct sales in other parts of Asia Pacific, Jonathan Crockett, Phillips’s Asia chairman, responded, “We are committed to Hong Kong as the leading international arts hub in Asia, and currently have no intention of holding auctions elsewhere in the region. That said, technology has enabled us to host auctions and engage with collectors in multiple locations in a way that was not possible before.”

Ultimately, it seems that Hong Kong’s positioning as a gateway to the collectors in mainland China is the city’s primary attraction for global auction houses like Phillips.

Veteran Swiss auctioneer and art dealer Simon de Pury, who was the house’s chairman from 2001 to 2012, observed, “Phillips’ collaboration with Poly, the leading Chinese auction company, has significantly contributed to their development and greatly enhanced their access to China’s pool of buyers. The expansion of Phillips in Hong Kong therefore makes a lot of sense.”

In spite of the successful partnership, Phillips has since teamed up with a different Chinese auction house, Yongle, for its 2022 sales in Hong Kong and Beijing. However, de Pury speculated that, from a strategic point of view, the ultimate development would be a merger between Phillips and Poly, which would turbocharge each of these two companies.

“It would seal the transformation of the global auction business from a duopoly to one dominated by three players,” de Pury said. “It will create a healthy emulation and competition which will ultimately not only benefit each actor but also strengthen further the importance of Hong Kong as a key auction center.”

Inadvertently, the latest edition of ABHK heighted the divisive discourse on whether Hong Kong still possesses the status of established art capital amid the rise of rival cities, not to mention the notion of soft power wielded by problematic governments across the world.

Yet proving two things can be true all at once, there were a fair number of gallery booths at the mega fair that brought something new, different, and even probed and explored the specific crises and conflicts of our time. 

Below, a look at the best eight presentations on show at the 2023 edition of Art Basel Hong Kong, which runs until March 25.

Moreover, the main video, positioned in the middle, was cut from the original 13 minutes to 6 minutes, with two of the four key virtual gods portrayed in the work, specifically the ones closely resembling Hindu deities Kali and Shiva, notably missing. The earth and air gods, seemingly inspired by the Buddhist pantheon, remained in the video.

According to BANK, the Shanghai-based gallery representing the artist at ART SG, they had been informed via the fair that Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), the government statutory board involved in licensing arts and entertainment in the city-state, found some parts of the visuals in Electromagnetic  Brainology! concerning.

Responding to ARTnews via email, founder of BANK, Mathieu Borysevicz said, “We were told that IMDA gave Lu Yang’s video work an NC16 rating, which meant that anyone under 16 would be prohibited to view it. This would have created many obstacles for a public project, so ART SG decided instead to ask for a re-edit of the video.”

Additionally, the gallery was informed that the artwork placed in the fair’s public space with an advisory sign would not suffice.

“Initially I was opposed to this entirely as the integrity of the presentation rested upon the channels that were edited out. However, after discussion with the artist, and given the very last-minute nature of the project, we decided to move forward,” he added.

Lu was shocked when he found out Electromagnetic Brainology!, which is available online in its full version, had to be cut for ART SG. “This work is very popular and has been shown in many places all over the world including Art Basel Hong Kong,” he wrote in an email. “It never happened before. It was shown for the first time at M Woods Museum in Beijing, and it was totally not a problem. Many kids dance in front of the video, and they really like it.”

Lu was informed by BANK about the work requiring changes on December 28, exactly two weeks before the fair’s vernissage. Since he was off-site on an island in Colombia during that time, the gallery helped to edit the video work.

“At that time, the gallery also felt that it was very disrespectful to my work and proposed that it should not be exhibited. However, I accepted their request considering that the gallery had already incurred so much expenditure and a lot of work was already done in the early stage,” he explained.

Lu, who was the BMW Art Journey winner at Art Basel in 2019, believed that if the fair had told the gallery earlier, at least before the physical part of the installation was on the way to Singapore and the booths materials, walls, televisions and other equipment were in production, he would have shown a different work.

Typically, in Singapore, art exhibitions, plays, music and dance performances, variety shows, and concerts require applying for an Arts Entertainment License (AEL) from IMDA, unless exempted. This involves assessment and classification of the event and its content.

Responding to ARTnews via email, a spokesperson from IMDA stated, “The full version of film ‘Electromagnetic Brainology’ is classified NC16 (Some Mature Content). ART SG chose to screen a version with a lower rating due to the chosen venue. Exhibitors are required to adhere to the licensing conditions and enforce the relevant age restrictions.”

According to classification guidelines for films publicly available on IMDA’s website, the NC16 rating is for “mature themes that are appropriate for viewers aged 16 years and above” such as issues related to “adult life, including adultery, alternative sexualities, gender identities, promiscuity, suicide, drug/substance abuse, etc.”

In response to a query from ARTnews, Art SG sent over a lengthy statement that a spokesperson said could not be used unless it was quoted in full:

As a matter of course, any work that is being shown as part of the ART SG curated official public program, that features work in the medium of film or video, is checked with IMDA for rating purposes. The work by Lu Yang contains video and was initially rated by IMDA as NC16 meaning that it was deemed unsuitable for viewing by children under the age of 16 years. The gallery was informed about the rating as soon as we received it. It was the only film or video work to be shown on the public spaces of the show floor.

Given that children are welcome to the show, and the circumstance that the work was to be on display in an unrestricted, open and public area of the Fair, it wasn’t a context in which it would be possible to adhere to the NC16 access requirements.

In order to be able to show it in a public space, it was agreed with the gallery to create a version of the work that would allow it to be shown in an unrestricted context.

The revised version provided by the gallery was resubmitted to IMDA, and received an updated advisory rating of ‘PG 13’, which meant that the work was able to be shown without any access restraints, with a sign indicating the updated advisory rating.

We are very apologetic to the artist and gallery that the work was not able to be shown in its entirety in the space that we had allocated. We should have found a way of showing the whole work for over 16s and we will be reviewing our timelines and processes going forward to ensure such a situation doesn’t arise again.

Long-time local arts organisations tend to take a different approach to IMDA’s advisories and ratings. OH!, a homegrown arts non-profit, is known for its public art presentations in diverse spaces in Singapore, such as the exhibition “For the House; Against the House: ______ is Dead,” which was held in January in the heart of the shopping district.

“We did get advisories for certain works displayed at the recent ‘For the House; Against the House: ______ is Dead.’ We kept the works up and chose to frost the glass panels of selected shop units at Tanglin Shopping Centre to allow audiences the chance to choose whether they would like to engage with the works and exhibition,” said Lim Su Pei, deputy director of OH! Open House.

It is worth noting that Singapore, like most aspiring and established art capitals, has its own storied history of censorship. In 1994, when Singaporean artist Josef Ng’s performed a famous work that involved trimming his pubic hair, there was an intense public debate on obscenity in art. A restriction of government funding for performance art followed, lasting from 1994 to 2004.

Yet, more often than not, censorship does not come from the government but from the public, in acts of self-censorship. Artworks perceived by members of the public as being sexually explicit or going against societal norms tend to incite online furor and subsequent backtracking by the arts organisations or artists involved. This was the case in 2018 with Singaporean artist Vincent Leow’s sketch of the back of a naked man on top of a chicken exhibited at Esplanade – Theatres on The Bay.

Most recently, Belgian art collector Alain Servais, who was in town for ART SG, tweeted about posters placed strategically on the glass entrance of Hatch Art Project, an art gallery in Singapore’s hipster enclave, showcasing Vietnamese artist Nguyễn Quốc Dũng’s ongoing solo show “The Lives of Others.” Dũng’s work typically focuses on vulnerable communities, such as migrant workers and transgender people, portraying their nude forms in private spaces.

Servais learned from staff that the posters were placed on the glass doors to partially conceal Dũng’s nude paintings as passersby supposedly made disturbed facial expressions while looking at the artworks as they walked by the gallery. ARTnews reached out to Hatch Art Project and Dũng. Both parties declined to comment.

As Servais observed, “Contemporary art is about making you think about things you may want or may not want to think about but it should be one’s choice to turn the head away and not some public authority’s decision or worst, the vicious hydra of self-censorship.”

Initiated by STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery and the National Arts Council, S.E.A. Focus presents mostly galleries from Singapore and Southeast Asia, a region inciting a great deal of global interest at the moment.  

Emi Eu, executive director of STPI and project director of S.E.A. Focus, told ARTnews, “It is great to finally have more international dialogue on Singapore’s role in the global art market and as a hub for Southeast Asia. We hope that this will translate to stimulating the region’s art market, and in turn catapult Singapore’s standing as a global art market player.”

Hong Kong–based art dealer Pascal de Sarthe, whose gallery is exhibiting at the fair, observed that the Southeast Asian art market is still emerging and is increasingly drawing the attention of collectors globally. “For the last few years, Singapore has grown to be an even more appealing financial hub within the Asian region, to the benefit of the Southeast Asian art ecosystem,” he said.

Eu believes S.E.A. Focus will only continue to benefit from this ongoing momentum: “Especially when we are also physically located in Singapore’s up and coming arts enclave at Tanjong Pagar Distripark [alongside a historic port in the city], we are also seeing other galleries joining and growing this cluster, such as Gajah, Art Agenda, 39+ Art Space, and, more recently, Whitestone Gallery.”

Often described as a platform rather than an art fair, S.E.A. Focus originally launched in 2019 as an alternative to then-declining and now-defunct fair, Art Stage Singapore. It moved to its current location, during the pandemic and adapted a booth-less exhibition format with a curatorial theme for each edition. This year’s theme is “a world, anew.” Prior to this, it used to be held at Gillman Barracks, another visual arts enclave in Singapore, which is currently being transformed into a lifestyle destination.

This year’s edition is simple and straight-forward in its presentation with a contained selection of works on show, allowing visitors to cover the fair quickly. One of the standout sections at S.E.A. Focus belongs to 39+ Art Space, a first-time fair participant presenting a solo presentation of Indonesian artist Jumaadi. Titled “Almost Natural,” the works on view are intricate, detailed acrylic paintings on buffalo hide.

“The artist’s approach gave a contemporary language to the classic material that is important in many Asian cultures. Visitors have been intrigued by the historical and cultural context of the works,” said Chinese art dealer Liu Ying Mei, who opened 39+ Art Space in Singapore last year.

Dealers on the ground also reported strong interest, though both S.E.A. Focus and participating galleries do not typically share sales reports during the fair’s run.

According to French collector Guillaume Levy-Lambert, who runs Art Porters Gallery in Singapore, “Visitors come out of S.E.A. Focus energized by our presentation, its freshness and variety.” The gallerist reported that by Monday morning re-hanging was required as three out of four works by Malaysian artist Chok Yue Zan’s works had sold in the first few days of the fair.

Interestingly, several galleries participating in S.E.A. Focus will also have at booth at ART SG this week. They view doing so as a natural choice, since “both fairs have different objectives. One is a platform focused on Southeast Asian galleries and artists; the other is a major international fair with a much broader mandate,” Levy-Lambert said.

The latest edition of the smaller fair also includes the launch of the SAM S.E.A. Focus Art Fund, a new program involving a jury selection of outstanding works at the fair which will be donated to the Singapore Art Museum’s collection with the support of couple Yenn Wong and Alan Lo, restauranteurs and arts patrons based in Hong Kong and Singapore, for a period of three years. The inaugural works acquired through the fund are a series of 13 works by Indonesian artist Agung Kurniawan presented by Jakarta-based gallery ROH Projects; and Mercurial Inscription (2022), a video work by Malaysian artist Tan Zi Hao, presented by Kuala Lumpur–based gallery A+ Works of Art.

“Singapore is asserting itself as a major influence on the regional art ecosystem, but its cultural output remains under-represented on the global art scene,” Lo said. “We see the SAM S.E.A. Focus Fund as a crucial initiative to build and expand a meaningful legacy for art from Southeast Asia.”

Eu agreed, “For every edition of S.E.A. Focus, our ultimate wish is for visitors to discover something new about Southeast Asia through its art, artists, and the dialogue around it. We hope that everyone will come away from [the fair] with a deeper understanding and appreciation of Southeast Asian contemporary art.”