MCLC: Art Basel HK

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Art Basel HK
Source: NYT (3/12/15)
Asia Gears Up for Art Basel Hong Kong
By AMY QIN
Cao Fei’s ‘‘Same Old, Brand New,’’ a large-scale video installation that was commissioned by Art Basel. CreditCao Fei
HONG KONG — When the third edition of Art Basel Hong Kong opens to the public on Sunday, the atmosphere at Asia’s hottest contemporary art fair will be noticeably cooler — for reasons that have less to do with the region’s overall economic slowdown than the shift in the fair’s dates from humid May to balmy March.
But the show’s organizers hope the real draw of the date change for collectors and galleries will be more distance in the international art world calendar from the fair madness of May and June.
“Because of the timing, we weren’t reaching the potential we thought we could reach,” said Marc Spiegler, director of Art Basel.
With the March date, Art Basel Hong Kong — the newest outpost of the Art Basel triumvirate that also includes editions in Switzerland and Miami Beach — will no longer run up against Frieze New York, Gallery Weekend in Berlin and the Venice Biennale in May, not to mention the flagship Art Basel in June.
If all goes according to plan, the shift will allow Art Basel Hong Kong to bring in more big Western art players to mix with the younger, less-established regional contemporary art scene for a week of openings, cocktail parties, panel discussions and dinners — a unique intermingling of East and West that has in many ways come to define Art Basel Hong Kong from its counterparts.
Zhu Jinshi’s “Stone Story” (2014) is one of the works being presented by the Pearl Lam Galleries of Hong Kong.CreditZhu Jinshi and Pearl Lam Galleries
The strategy appears to be working. This year’s fair will feature 233 galleries from 37 countries and territories — slightly fewer than last year, but still maintaining the 50-50 split between Asian and Western exhibitors, as in previous years. Art-world heavyweights like Gagosian Gallery, Acquavella, Pace, David Zwirner and Hauser & Wirth will be alongside prominent Asian galleries like ShanghART Gallery and Vitamin Creative Space.
But there will also be 29 first-time exhibitors, including Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art from New York, Thomas Dane Gallery from London, Skarstedt from New York and London, and, from the Asia-Pacific region, Darren Knight Gallery from Sydney and Liang Gallery from Taipei.
“We’ve been wanting to do the fair for some time,” Mr. Nahem said. “But as somebody who prides himself on sourcing great material, and it certainly doesn’t grow on trees, it wouldn’t have been easy to do the two fairs close to each other,” he said, referring to Art Basel in Switzerland.
Another first-time exhibitor is the Andrea Rosen Gallery of New York, which will be bringing a billboard by the Cuban-born American artist Félix González-Torres, among other work. Called “Untitled” (1995), the billboard will be exhibited in tram shelters and transportation hubs across the city in partnership with the Hong Kong nonprofit organization K11 Art Foundation.
“I think a lot of people have a curiosity about Hong Kong right now,” Ms. Rosen said.
The Andrea Rosen Gallery of New York will be bringing ‘‘Untitled’’ (1995), a billboard by the Cuban-born American artist Félix González-Torres.CreditTodd Johnson/ArtPace San Antonio TX, 2010
The emergence of Hong Kong as a top destination for international art-world figures is a recent phenomenon. When the local art fair, ART HK, began in 2008, the city was known mostly as a global financial capital. That changed as the market for contemporary art began to flourish, a shift accelerated by the purchase in 2011 of ART HK by MCH Swiss Exhibition (Basel) Ltd., Art Basel’s parent company. (The founders of ART HK will be debuting a more Asia-focused, satellite fair called Art Central on Saturday.)
“I think now that we’ve established Hong Kong as the major site for the fair in Asia, the bigger task is to focus on the markets that feed the fair,” Mr. Spiegler said.
To that end, the team of organizers led by Mr. Spiegler and Adeline Ooi, the new Asia director for Art Basel, have been focusing on recruiting collectors and museum directors, with an emphasis on the Asia-Pacific region. Expected to attend this year are the heads of major arts institutions like the Tate in Britain in London, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei and M+, Hong Kong’s visual culture museum that is scheduled to open in 2018. Last year, the event, which is being held again at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center, logged about 65,000 visitors.
“There is a curiosity about all these galleries and artists they’ve never heard of,” Mr. Spiegler said. “For the Asian collectors, that’s especially true, because the different art scenes in Asia are historically so disconnected from one another.”
David Heng, 48, a collector in Singapore, has attended the event every year since it began as ART HK in 2008. “ The fair is getting quite interesting,” he said. The scale is growing, he added, and “we’re starting to see a lot of big names in terms of the works the galleries are bringing.”
A 2014 work by the artist Qin Yufen is being shown by Pearl Lam Galleries.CreditQin Yufen and Pearl Lam Galleries
 The juxtaposition of Western and Asian artists at the fair makes for a fresh cultural dialogue for collectors who are accustomed to viewing one or two artists at a time here in galleries or at auctions, said Pearl Lam, a Hong Kong dealer “It’s a very different way of looking at art,” said Ms. Lam, who opened a second Hong Kong gallery in the Sheung Wan neighborhood in time for the festivities. “But now with contemporary art being so fashionable, the gallery culture in Hong Kong is coming together and everybody is getting into the habit of going to art fairs.”
Among the many artists being highlighted at the show is Cao Fei, a rising Chinese artistknown for her exploration of Chinese identitythrough multimedia and video projects.
For this year’s fair, she will present “Same Old, Brand New,” a large-scale video installation commissioned by Art Basel that will be shown across the façade of the 118-story International Commerce Centre, the tallest building in Hong Kong.
The work, which draws on symbols and logos from video games in a reference to popular and youth culture in ultra-wired Hong Kong in particular, will be shown each night from Friday to Tuesday, with a smartphone app viewers can download.
While not explicitly political, Ms. Cao’s piece, with its reference to Hong Kong youth, inevitably calls to mind the recent democracy protests that convulsed the city for months as protesters, many of them young Hong Kongers, took to the streets to demand open elections for the territory’s chief executive.
“Everybody is curious how the recent political unrest is going to have an impact on the arts community,” said Doryun Chong, chief curator of M+.
He added: “My view is actually that this shifting ground that we’re standing on in fact actually makes things much more interesting.”
by denton.2 at osu.edu on March 13, 2015
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