We've spent the last week in Hong Kong visiting the gallery shows, installations, and art fairs of HK Art Week 2019. The obvious highlight of the week was Art Basel Hong Kong, which once again offered a great overview of the current state of the diverse art scenes across Asia and beyond with works from some of the biggest names of our time, as well as a wide range of younger, emerging artists, focusing on historical work from the region as well as up-and-coming artists and galleries.
If talking numbers, the 7th edition of Art Basel Hong Kong featured 242 leading galleries from 35 countries and territories, whose presentations resulted in the record attendance of 88,000 visitors between March 27th and March 31st. We visited the fair during the press preview and enjoyed works by some of our favorite artists and galleries and (personally,) also discovered some new names.
Aside from seeing latest pieces by some of our favorites, it was interesting to see some familiar names being represented by different galleries, namely, Barry McGee and Mark Ryden being shown @ Perrotin, with upcoming solo shows by both artists planned at the gallery's spaces in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Tokyo's Nanzuka Underground introduced new pieces by a couple of artists we've featured in the magazine, such as Haroshi, Javier Calleja, Todd James, Erik Parker, Mathew Palladino, James Jarvis, Hajime Sorayama, Julia Chiang, etc, while Kaikai Kiki gallery introduced new works by their signature artists such as Otani Workshop, TengaOne, Madsaki, Mr, or ob. Skarstedt gallery exhibited new works by the likes of George Condo, Eric Fischl, KAWS, and David Salle among others, while Blum and Poe had a large sculpture by Yoshitomo Nara dominating the space with new paintings by Sam Durant, Mark Grotjahn or Friedrich Kunath hanging on the walls of their booth. We've particularly enjoyed seeing the new mind-blowing painting by Robin F Williams @ PPOW gallery, or the selection of paintings @ Konig gallery's including works by Norbert Bisky, Evelyne Axell, Matthias Weischer, or John Seal. Other notable pieces were by Nicolas Party, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Adrian Ghenie, Dan Colen, Eddie Martinez, David Altmejd, Erik Peake, Chen Ching-Yuan, Duane Hanson, Ashley Bickerton, Bendt Eyckermans, and Daniel Richter to name a few.
