Art Stories…By Art.Serene: Art Basel Hong Kong 2019: Top Works and Booths

The seventh edition of Art Basel Hong Kong (at HKCEC, 29-31 March) showcasing 242 leading galleries from 35 countries and territories, has brought together aficionados and collectors from over 70 countries and markets. Apart from generating sales and interest, the fair is also a fascinating destination to view the world's premier Modern and contemporary art. Check out the fair highlights!

Top Works

Installation View: Carol Bove, Art Basel HK 2019

Sculptures

Stainless steel and urethane paint, size variable

David Zwirner

A set of four orangey red and lemon yellow painted-steel sculptures by Swiss artist Carol Bove(b. 1971), featured in David Zwirner's booth, is characterised by intricate folds that explore steel's formal and poetic possibilities.

Combined with highly-polished black discs and in dialogues with each other, these twisted forms look astonishingly flexible and lightweight. Though they can be perceived as human shapes, interpretations are open-ended, and that's why the pieces are so engaging and compelling.

Aki Inomata, Why Not Hand Over a "Shelter" to Hermit Crab? - (Hong Kong Island), 2019

Sculpture

Resin, 3D printing

5 × 5 × 4 cm

Maho Kubota Gallery

Hermit crabs, the little crustaceans which don't have fixed shells of their own and always forced to migrate, have spurred the Tokyo-based artist Aki Inomata (b.1983) to build permanent shelters for them. By appropriating accurate measurements from a real shell, Aki creates crystalline sculptures adorned with the skylines of NYC, Bangkok, Tokyo, Hong Kong, etc. Combining benevolence, imagination and scalable craftsmanship, what underpins this acclaimed project (2009-) is an inquiry into the sociopolitical issues of ownership, nationality and immigration.

Zhang Yu, Tea Feeding, 2019

Work on paper, tea, xuan paper

300 × 100 cm

Pifo Gallery

Beijing-based Zhang Yu (b.1959) creates his xuan paper paintings not with ink, brushes and calligraphy but by willfully infusing it with tea stains. During his daily performance at around 4 p.m., he will cautiously pour tea to rows of bowls from a kettle and stop only when each bowl becomes full. As such, tea gradually drips to formulate abstract brown rings on the paper. While subverting the traditional ideology centring on pen and ink, the artist stresses that his installation-based performance does not directly convey any messages except to reinterpret the nature of art.

Samson Young, Music While You Work, 2018

Installation

Drivable bumper car with custom-designed shell and audio Base: electronics and custom-designed audio tracks Shell: 3D printed nylon, soft pastel

200 × 120 × 140 cm

Edouard Malingue Gallery

A signature eye-candy art piece in an art fair, this bumper car in the shape of a gigantic 3D-printed sneaker calls to mind fond memories of an amusement park. While it slowly meanders, the post-war theme song from the classic BBC radio programme ‘Music While You Work’ gradually becomes audible. Samson Young (b.1979), the multi-disciplinary artist and music composer from Hong Kong, strives to explore the dissemination of music and its hidden social commentary through provocative visual gadgets.

Cheyney Thompson, Set 1, 2019

storageDevice (1[a-g]), 2019

Acrylic on canvas; oil on canvas, various materials in acrylic binder on canvas

7 parts: 103.5 x 78.4 cm each

Andrew Kreps Gallery

A new line of minimalist floor sculptures? What is in store for them? Anyone passes the booth are likely intrigued by these seven sleek metallic rectangular boxes, entitled storageDevice by New York-based artist Cheyney Thompson(b. 1975). He has long developed a painting practice based on self-imposed constraints and has accumulated seven typologies exemplified by the seven canvases hung on the booth wall.

Each storageDevice houses a unique set of seven paintings - monochromes, abstractions, appropriations of Ruben's painting in greyscale, among others - but only one from each device can be on view at a given time.

Leung Chi Wo, A Countess From Hong Kong, 2016

Installation

Belilios Public School uniform, cloth hanger, 1967 Hong Kong 50-cent coins, vinyl record This Is My Song by Petula Clark (1967), motor system

134 × 68 × 19 cm

Blindspot Gallery

"The Countess of Hong Kong", named after Charlie Chaplin's last film, depicts a swinging schoolgirl uniform while playing a vinyl record of a UK pop "This is my song" by Petula Clark - narratives that look irrelevant yet vividly assembled the occurrences in 1967.

Leung Chi Wo (b.1968), through meticulous archival research, gathers fragments of historical events to re-examine the "Hong Kong 1967 leftist riots". Subtly portraying a bygone era of turmoil, his kinetic installation attempts to negotiate a solution for the precarious future.

Jose Davila, The Most Famous Problem in the History of Mathematics is That of Squaring the Circle IV, 2019

Painting

Silkscreen print and acrylic paint on loomstate linen

260 × 300 × 6 cm

OMR

Unlike many of Jose Dávila's (b.1974) works which provoke discourse, the Mexican artist has come up with an alternative solution to an ancient mathematical question - "squaring a circle", metaphorically represents the ordeal to achieve something impossible. Through this wall sculpture of 11 separate canvases, the artist let the circle and squares interact and conform with each other, exemplifying notions of equilibrium, stability and permanence.

Zhao Zhao, In Extremis, 2018

Installation

Brass, stainless steel, black iron, blue steel, asphalt

Tang Contemporary Art

This ground installation resembles an ordinary road surfaced with asphalt which we take for granted. But in close inspection, it is inlaid with pieces of metallic plates, representing the flattened dead bodies of stray cats being smashed by vehicles across a busy road in Beijing. Zhao Zhao (b.1982), an emerging Chinese artist and once an assistant to Ai Weiwei, has turned what he witnessed into a eulogy which laments the lack of empathy in our contemporary culture. In Extremis was the title of the artist's solo exhibition which featured this concept in 2018.

Lee Bul, Willing to be Vulnerable - Metalized Balloon, 2019

Installation

Nylon taffeta cloth, polyester with aluminium foil, fan, electronic wiring

230 × 230 × 1000 cm

Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Lehmann Maupin, PKM Gallery

Drawing inspirations from the infamous Hindenburg zeppelin and its well-documented destruction in 1937, Korean artist Lee Bul (b.1964) has created a 10 metre long floating silver balloon that mimics the airship to symbolise the crushed dreams of modernity in the early 20th century.

Confronted with this compelling installation, we are at once bewildered by its sensational existence and obliged to ponder humanity's obsession with perfection and utopian ideals.

Jong Oh, Line Sculpture, 2018

Installation

Metal rod, string, paint, fishing wire, chain

Sabrina Amrani

New York-based Korean artist Jong Oh (b.1981) is described as a composer of space, and there is a certain poetic quality that permeates his work. For this occasion, he creates several almost invisible line sculptures made with strings, fishing wire and thin metal rods, alongside some wall-fixed minimalist white sculptures.

Upon entering his immersive space, there is no reason not to slow down our pace, wondering whether that subtle line is a string or a pencil line, and that cast shadow is real or just an optical illusion.

Top Booths