This is the first part of my review of the fair, featuring contemporary artworks by many artists who seem to be new faces at Art Basel Hong Kong. I think a lot of the galleries who showed this year were first-timers at the fair as well, which would explain the fresh selection of artists.

The second part of my review features the works of old and famous modern masters (and a little contemporary), which you can read here!

Tromarama (Febie Babyrose, Ruddy Hatumena, and Herbert Hans), Private Riots, 2014-2016, video animation, LCD monitor, boards, metallic wire, metallic frame, Edouard Malingue

This giant installation is part of the Encounters sector, which is a selection of large installation works placed across the grounds of the fair and which I considered the anchor of the event. Private Riots was one of the better works, but I was honestly disappointed by this year’s choices. My expectation was that the Encounters would be the most eye-catching works, but I was mostly disinterested.

Private Riots is so named as it means to talk about the different components involved in protest, and each image on the boards represents one such component. I seemed to have missed the TVs and the animations they will playing altogether, oops! I’m not too sure about the protest idea, but it appeared as if the images represented different aspects of our daily lives, and that appealed to me.

Huang Yong Ping, L’Arc de Saint-Gilles, 2015, wood, iron, fiberglass, taxidermic deer, gold leaf, kamel mennour

Huang Yong Ping just had an exhibition at the Power Station of Art in Shanghai with one work featuring headless animals which honestly creeped me out, so I’m glad to see that this deer has its whole body intact, HAHAHA.

Lina Ben Rejeb, Mémoires, à Toucher, 2015, mixed media on paper, Selma Feriani Gallery

Charles Avery, Tree no. 5 (from the Jadindagadendar), 2015, mixed media, Ingleby; Pilar Corrias

Huang Rui, Monkey, 2015, steel and restored furniture, 10 Chancery Lane Gallery

Huang Rui, Quadruple Happiness, 2014, steel and restored furniture, 10 Chancery Lane Gallery

This is a fun play on the “double happiness” character often seen on Chinese red decorative papers for weddings, but Quadruple Happiness is just more happiness to go around! (By the way, the “double happiness” character doesn’t make a real Chinese word, but a “single happiness” actually is a real word.)

舟 Fune, 1982, ink on Japanese paper; Wang Keping, Sitting Woman 1 WK14, 2012, plane, 10 Chancery Lane Gallery

Fune totally passes off an ink painting of a sitting woman, doesn’t it? I totally thought so until I realized it was purely a work of Japanese calligraphy.

Zhang Ding 張鼎, 18 Cubes 18個立方, 2016, man-made crystal, stainless steel plated in gold, ShangART; Krinzinger

Zhang Ding’s 18 Cubes is my favorite Encounters piece! It consists of 18 gold reflective cubes, which apparently you’re encouraged to “destroy” or “vandalize” or scratch off the gold or something. I wish there was a sign saying that; the kids could have gone crazy on this instead of reportedly touching and knocking artworks that they weren’t supposed to.

On that note, if you have noticed in the photos above, there were just SO MANY people when I went, definitely much more compared to last year. There were announcements repeated every few seconds asking visitors to please not touch/bang/knock into artworks, although there were really so many people it was quite easy to accidentally back into an artwork.

Ebru Uygun, LOVE, 2016, mixed media on canvas, Dirimart

There was quite a collection of mirrored/cracked mirrored works…

Lee Bul, Civitas Solis, 2016, acrylic mirrors, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac

Zhao Zhao 趙趙, Fragment 碎片, 2015, brass, Tang Contemporary Art

Tatsuo Miyajima, Moon in the ground no. 2, 2015, stainless steel, light emitting diode, IC, electric wire

Yang Fudong, Ms. Huang at M Last Night 5, 2006 (left), Seven Intellectuals in Bamboo Forest, Part 5, 2007 (right), black and white inkjet print, Marian Goodman Gallery

Liu Ye 劉野, Snow White 白雪公主, 2006, Dominique Lévy

I was drawn by the light effect of Liu Ye’s painting! The contrast between light and dark got exaggerated on camera, but the painting essentially depicts Snow White in a circle of light on a blue background.

Kader Attia, Sacrifice and Harmony, 2016, sanded steel and feathers

Zhang Xiaogang 張曉剛, Flashlight 手電筒, 2008-2015, oil on canvas, Pace

Claire Fontaine, Foreigners Everywhere (Chinese), 2008, suspended, wall or window mounted neon (ruby red) framework, electronic transformer, cables, Air de Paris

Paul Chan, Greene Naftali

This was really quite… questionable. It’s made of those long balloon things that are pumped from the bottom and the air moves upwards – I always saw them outside estate showflats. Here, three of them have been shaped into women’s puffer jackets, in black to match the Hong Kong taste, and they move from side to side in a mad fashion. I had to capture a bit of it on video, which will be coming up soon!

Stella Zhang, all part of 0-Viewpoint series, Galerie du Monde

This felt like a continuation of what was happening just above, with a smattering of black stuff covering the entire gallery booth. I’ve seen other works by Zhang, but this just doesn’t work for me.

Zhang Xiao, Since there is a dream, 2015, archival inkjet print, clocks, Blindspot Gallery

The images on the multiple clocks come together to form a big picture of Tiananmen (Gate)! The outside of the clocks have some prints about CCTV… I wonder if this work is making a jab about Chinese politics. Very interesting.

Chen Zhen 陳箴, Opening of a Closed Center 打開密封的中心, 1997, mixed media of wood, metal, found objects, furniture, de Sarthe Gallery

Big question: Are the security staff part of the artwork?

I mean, this could be a new form of half-installation, half-performance art (with live people performing an act as part of an artwork)! I thought the title could give me a better idea, but it just sounds as if the security staff could possibly be part of it. I couldn’t stand not knowing, so I decided to get over any potential embarrassment and ask them.

So, it turns out they weren’t part of the artwork. They were there to prevent people from possibly knocking everything down. Only in Hong Kong, people! I’m convinced there won’t ever be such a sight at Art Basel in Basel or Miami.

Antony Gormley, rooftop sculpture part of Event Horizon, Nov 2015 – May 2016

Antony Gormley, Transfuser IV, 2002, mild steel rings, Galerie Thomas

What happens when the standing man goes horizontal.

Keiji Uematsu, Invisible axis – distance and angle, 2016, stainless steel, granite, stainless steel wire, Yumiko Chiba

Tintin Wulia, Five Tonnes of Homes and Other Understories, 2016, mixed media of metal, paper, ink, Osage

This Encounter installation is made up of cardboard “waste,” and it stems from the artist’s involvement in the cardboard recycling network in Hong Kong’s Central district. I didn’t know there was so much cardboard recycling going on in Central, but that’s good to know. I appreciate artists putting a focus on ideas or issues that we might not easily encounter in our daily lives in their art, but aesthetically, piles of cardboard would understandably not look so great. I think it’s not the most well executed artwork, but that could be said for many other contemporary artworks too.

Gavin Turk, American Bag, 2015, painted bronze, Ben Brown Fine Arts

Another piece of trash Refuse – okay, it’s come back as an American Bag this year.

Vik Muniz, Golden Gate Bridge (Postcards from Nowhere), 2015, digital C-print, Ben Brown Fine Arts

Qiu Deshu 仇德樹, Fissure, ShangART Gallery

Qiu Deshu 仇德樹, A Lot of Snow Looks Very Clean and Cold 積血清寒, 2005, acrylic on rice paper on canvas, Alisan Fine Arts

I’d seen an exhibition of Qiu Deshu at ShangART in Singapore last summer, and I was really impressed by Qiu’s contemporary take on shanshui (literally mountain water) paintings pieced together by torn bits of tissue paper, if I don’t remember wrongly. It comes out really nicely, especially in his immense wall-length quad-typch piece.

It was nice to see Qiu’s works again at Art Basel, but here they’re smaller in size and made with different materials, and have some stylistic differences as well.

Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg, A Thief Caught in the Act, 2015, wood, metal, canvas, modelling clay, acrylic paint, Lisson

It’s not one thief, it’s a bunch of birds stealing jewelry in the last Encounter installation of this post. There are lamps on each table that alternately go on and off, highlighting the whole caught in the act thing. I like that pink owl on the left because, pink! owl!

Overall, I thought that the fair this year was a step down from the fairs the last two years, and I found myself walking by too many artworks without being attracted to look at many in detail. The setup of an art fair itself, especially with so many visitors cramped into the space, doesn’t allow for long insightful studies of artworks. I just hope to discover new works and artists by how well artworks were able to attract my attention. I definitely prefer to go to orderly curated exhibitions, but going to an art fair is still fun – it’s not often you get to see so many artworks of different media, styles, sizes, and cultures all gathered under one roof.

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It was a 3-day affair from 14-16 March and I went on the second day. I didn’t know this earlier but Sundays are crazily packed days for art fairs (Art Basel sold out their online tickets for Sunday!). It was held in a giant tent on the Central Harbourfront Event Space, a newly built space with a gorgeous park around it, with gray carpeted floors and wooden planks beneath. I’m not sure if anyone else noticed, but if you stepped a little too hard and a little too near to an art piece on one of those display blocks, the art piece would wobble just slightly!!

Art Central was split into two sections: Central and Rise. Central features established galleries from Asia and beyond, while Rise features up-and-coming galleries representing emerging artists. Overall, there was a strong focus on Asian galleries with works mostly being made within these few years. Many pictures ahead and my full review of Art Central below!

Lynne Roberts-Goodwin, MORE THAN EVER Think the Mountain series, 2014, archival photographic print, .M Contemporary

Simone Rosenbauer, Like Ice In Sunshine #13; Like Ice In The Sunshine #2; Like Ice In The Sunshine #10; Like Ice In Sunshine #1 (clockwise from top left), 2014, fine art pigment print, .M Contemporary

Li Hongbo, Wood – Pier, 2014, paper, Contemporary by Angela Li

Li Hongbo, Bust of a Boy, 2013, paper, Contemporary by Angela Li

Li Hongbo’s movable paper works were a huge hit with the crowd, especially when a staff member pulled the Bust of a Boy upwards for a fun show. Even when I saw it up close, it was almost impossible to tell it was made of many layers of stacked paper.

Shunsuke François Nanjo, Monolithe 147, 2015, 1/2 Alpha Romeo, Lights, Sound System, Art Statements

Liang Quan, Tea and A Bit of Coffee, 2001, coffee, tea, color and ink on paper collage, Hive Center for Contemporary Art

Lü Nan, The Four Seasons – Everyday Life of Tibet Peasants, 1996-2004, gelatin silver print, series of 109 photos, Hive Center for Contemporary Art

Lü Nan, On the Road – The Catholic Church in China, 1992-1996, gelatin silver print, series of 60 photos, Hive Center for Contemporary Art

This semester, I’ve been taking a class on 19th century modern European art that I’m having the best time with. I learnt about Gustave Courbet and Jean-François Millet who were two influential French artists of the Realist movement. This might be a long stretch but Lü Nan’s The Four Seasons – Everyday Life of Tibet Peasants instantly made me think of Millet’s The Gleaners (1857) and the photograph beside it, On the Road – The Catholic Church in China gave me Courbet’s A Burial at Ornans (1849-50) vibes. Could Lü Nan have taken inspiration from these artists?

Song Ling, Meaningless Choice? No. 60, 1993, ink on paper, Hive Center for Contemporary Art

Lee Kyoung-mi, SAN FRANCISCO ON THE TABLE-HOTEL HERBERT, 2014, oil on constructed birch panel, CAIS Gallery

Choi So-young, House Overlooking the Sea, 2015, denim, CAIS Gallery

Nam Kyung-min, Wandering about Landscape of the Inner, 2011, oil on linen, CAIS gallery

Hong Kyoung-tack, Library Elvis pointing a gun at a dove, 2013, oil on linen, CAIS gallery

Chung Doo-hwa, Sound, 2014, book on wood, CAIS gallery

Hisao Domoto, Untitled, 1959, oil on canvas, SAKURADO FINE ARTS

This was probably the oldest work I saw at Art Central, haha! I really like the explosion of colors and the materiality of the paint – the way you can see how the oil paint has been applied and twisted around the canvas.

Zhou Jirong, Red Gate Gallery

Zhou Jirong, Landscape – Arrow Tower, 2013, mixed media print, Red Gate Gallery

Li Xiaofeng, Ocean Travels, 2008, Ming period shards, Red Gate Gallery

A suit jacket, dress shirt and tie entirely made up of Ming period shards! I found it ridiculously amusing. I’d worried that valuable Ming period vases/pots/other forms of Chinese material culture were intentionally broken to form these shards, but my Chinese friend told me that there are many of these shards left in China. Great way for recycling artistic materials!

Lee Yanor, Zemack Contemporary Art

Giovanni Ozzola, Untitled with Light, 2014, ink jet print on cotton paper, Gazelli Art House

This is my favorite artwork in the entire fair. I can’t pinpoint what exactly makes it work so well for me, but I definitely love the feeling of tranquility and serenity in this photograph.

Miya Ando, Shiki 2, 2015, pigment, urethane, resin and dye on aluminium, Sundaram Tagore Gallery

Mo Yi, “5.16 Notice” – It’s Been 49 Years, 1 set of 49 photos, Contemporary by Angela Li

This is an interesting one. Each photo has a year printed in red across it starting from 1966 on the top left photo to 2014 on the bottom right photo. Every photo also has ‘5.16’ “written” repeatedly on the photo, a small detail easy to miss. And most interesting of all, every photo features Mao Zedong or something associated with him.

I’ll say the artwork is referencing to the Cultural Revolution, which was launched on May 16th 1966 and ended in 1976 with Mao’s death. The way the photos continue up till 2014 is left up to your interpretation.

Hiroshi Senju, Waterfall, 2011, acrylic pigment on Japanese mulberry paper, Sundaram Tagore Gallery

Hiroshi Senju, Waterfall, 2014, acrylic and fluorescent pigments on Japanese mulberry paper, Sundaram Tagore Gallery

I’m a new fan of Hiroshi Senju! He paints in the Japanese nihonga style (I explained this earlier as often making use of a creamy wash to create an atmospheric effect) but his contemporary take on it is very unique to his work. I love how he retains that atmospheric feeling in his works.

Sebastião Salgado, Church Gate Station, Bombay, India, 1995, gelatin silver print, Sundaram Tagore Gallery

Sebastião Salgado, Southern right whale, Valdes Peninsula, Argentina, 2004, gelatin silver print, Sundaram Tagore Gallery

William Klein, Smoke + Veil, Paris (for Vogue), 1958; Nina & Simone, Piazza di Spagna, Roma (for Vogue), 1961; Hat with Five Roses, Barbara Mullen, Paris (top to bottom), 1956, gelatin silver prints, Hackelbury Fine Art

William Klein, Dorothy blowing light smoke rings, Paris, 1962, gelatin silver print, mounted to aluminium, Hackelbury Fine Art

I’d previously seen WIlliam Klein’s three works pictured above on Artsy and it was so nice to see them for myself in real life! I would have preferred if the photographs didn’t have those neon color borders though. Dorothy blowing light smoke rings, Paris was a great discovery and I just love it. Polished and whimsical at the same time.

Mónica Dixon, Fairfield; Germantown; Hook Road (left to right), 2015, acrylic on canvas, Barnadas Huang

Vanessa Wong, Entity 016, 2015, watercolor on paper; Entity 003, 2012, acrylic print on paper; Entity 005, 2012, acrylic print on paper; Entity 016, 2014, watercolor on paper (anticlockwise from right), The Cat Street Gallery

Chi Chien, Fine Particles, 2015, gold leaf, bronze, concrete, Affinity for Art

The note writes, “I am a real rose. Please don’t touch me! Thank you.” That was the only way I could have known this rose was real! And it’s still so pretty after being painted over with gold.

Chi Chien, A Form, 2015, mixed media, Affinity for Art

Chi Chien, Indigo River; Début; Dunes (left to right), 2015, mixed media, Affinity for Art

I was very taken with Chi Chien’s works, especially with A Form. There is a nice serenity to Chi Chien’s series of works, yet those planes look like war planes, so I feel there is an underlying edge to the narrative of his works.

Ran Hwang, Healing Blossoms, 2012, paper, buttons, pins, beads on wooden panels (7 panels), Opera Gallery

Bahk Seong-hi, An Aggregation, 2013, charcoal with nylon threads, Opera Gallery

Opera Gallery’s booth was like this space of Zen in the middle of Art Central’s tent! Ran Hwang’s Healing Blossoms was a popular piece among fair-goers, and rightfully so, it’s so beautiful. Bahk Seong-hi’s An Aggregation is also a stunner. I love the atmospheric feel of this piece, and the shadows cast by the charcoal bits feel like they’re part of the artwork itself.

Xu Qu, Lineament (Laocoon), 2015, brass, cutting forging, Yallay Gallery

This one caught my eye immediately because it outlines Laocoön, a sculpture from the ancient Greco-Roman Classical period. For those interested, Laocoön is the guy who warned the Troyans not to accept the wooden horse left by the Greeks; it’s that story behind the ‘Trojan horse.’ The Greek goddess Athena and god Poseidon favored the Greeks and sent sea-serpents to kill innocent Laocoön and his two sons, and this scene is depicted in Laocoön and Lineament (Laocoon).

Chris Levine, Kate’s Light, 2013, lenticular lightbox, The FIne Art Society Contemporary

island6, Precisely the Amount of Feathers, 2013, RGB LED display, acrylic painting, paper collage, teakwood frame, Bath Street Gallery

Another Mao-related piece, albeit with more humor! This is actually a moving image, showing a housekeeper dusting a statue of Mao. You can almost hear her tsk-tsking away.

Phil Shaw, Equo Ne Credite, 2014, eight color pigment based archival print on hahnemuhle paper, Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery

Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery

Stephan Reusse, kissing, laser scanning, 10 min loop, edition of 5, Lukas Feichtner Galerie

This moving image was pretty cool! The sexes of the two figures seem to have been deliberately left ambiguous though.

Chiho Akama, Connected Lives, 2013, Japanese paper, special resin, and acrylic resin (3 separate works); Black Currant and Wild Strawberry Cake – Santa’s Nibble, 2009, cotton, yarn, viscose, polyvinyl chloride; Garden Lovers – Orchestrated World of Nature, 2014, Japanese paper, bark, polyester resin, and acrylic resin, Dillon Gallery (left to right)

Desire Obtain Cherish, Testament of Faith – 25mg, 2014, UV cast resin and acrylic, Bluerider Art

The title says it all. On a superficial note, I love the pop of colors!

Desire Obtain Cherish, One’s Pacifier is Another’s Panacea – CHANEL, 2013, cast resin and acrylic, Bluerider Art

Desire Obtain Cherish, Meltdown – Sugarcane Bubblegum; Medium Meltdown – Grape, 2013, UV cast resin, Bluerider Art

Li Hui, The Captured Rhinoceros, 2012, stainless steel, PARKVIEW ART Hong Kong

Simon Roberts, Blackpool Promenade, Lancashire, 24th July, 2008, fujicolor crystal archive print, Flowers Gallery

Nadav Kander, Nanjing II, Jiangsu II (Metal Palm), 2007, chromogenic color print, Flowers Gallery

I’m not sure if Simon Roberts and Nadav Kander work together or anything like that, but I found their photographs both intriguing and strange in similar ways. It was as if I could recognize where the photographs were taken, yet at the same time, the scenes look constructed and a little fake. Both artists put a place to their photographs, but again, could they just be an illusionistic idea of the places they were depicting?

Patrick Hughes, Fondation Beyeler, 2007, oil on board construction, Flowers Gallery

Patrick Hughes, Popper, 2015, oil on board construction, Flowers Gallery

Flowers Gallery had a great selection of works, and I can safely say that Patrick Hughes’s works were the most photographed at Art Central! He creates these pieces that look flat when you look at them straight on, but they seem to move along with you as you move to see it from a different angle. That’s when you realize that there are panels sticking out from the frame with different images on different sides, as you can see with Fondation Beyeler. 

Michael Wolf, Architecture of Density #108, 2008, chromogenic color print, Flowers Gallery

Miguel Chevalier, Fractal Flowers B&W 4; Fractal Flowers B&W 2 (top to bottom), 2008, lambda print and diasec with frame in wood, Puerta Roja

Miguel Chevalier, Silene Luminaris sive Muflier de Borges, 2014, sculpture 3D printing (resin), Puerta Roja

Lucia Tallová, Black Pearls; Fährschiffhafen in Saßnitz (left to right), 2015, acrylic on canvas, gallery VERNON

Detail of Fährschiffhafen in Saßnitz

Lucia Tallová’s cityscapes are hauntingly beautiful. I really liked the detail in Fährschiffhafen in Saßnitz, with the soft lines of the headlights and a curious polka dot pattern.

Nobuyoshi Araki, Love on the Left Eye #01, 2014, platinum and palladium print, amanasalto

I really like this one! Two very separate images placed together that somehow works. amanasalto dedicated its entire booth to Nobuyoshi Araki’s works, all of which plays with the juxtaposition of black and white images. Unfortunately, only Love on the Left Eye #01 worked for me. The right image is actually a ghostly photograph of people crossing the road, but a bit of Art Central was reflected in the photo frame!

Damien Hirst, Methylamine- 13c; 3- Methylthymidine (left to right), silkscreen print with diamond dust, Other Criteria

Damien Hirst, ‘For the Love of God, Devotion,’ silkscreen print, Other Criteria

It was nice to see some works of Damien Hirst’s, a well-known contemporary artist, at Art Central. I’m not a fan of Hirst because I find his works too provocative or sometimes scary for me, but he fits right in with Art Central’s aesthetic.

Baden Pailthorpe, MQ-9 Reaper, 2014, HD 3D animation, color, sound, 4 min 39 sec

I’m not sure how to phrase this but Baden Pailthorpe’s MQ-9 Reaper felt kind of sci-fi-ish and otherworldly. There’s a long part when the camera pans around an airplane hovering in front of a container home with a man standing there practicing boxing moves. Again, it was both intriguing and strange at the same time.

Lee Jeong-lok, Tree of Life in Island 5-3-1, 2013, c-type print, Albemarle Gallery and Shine Artists

There were five large-scale installations Art Central categorized as Projects, and here are three that I particularly took notice of.

Stella Zhang, 0-Viewpoint-6-2, 2010, mixed media, Galerie du Monde

Lan Zhenghui, re-thINK, 2014, Ethan Cohen New York

Li Hui, Bridge, 2006, stainless steel, PARKVIEW ART Hong Kong

I hope this has given you a sense of how Art Central was! While looking at the pictures again, I realized that half of the artworks were in black and white, and the other half generally rendered in bright neon colors. I would have liked more variety overall, in medium and especially in style.

Before going to the fair, I’d read a Huffington Post review that called it “irreverent.” I have to agree – I felt that Art Central showcased the edgier side of art, with many artworks that were eye-catching but at times, provocative and even controversial. While I appreciated the range of works shown at Art Central, this style of art is not really my kind of thing so I would not be the best person to comment on that.

Of course, this has only been Art Central’s first year, and we have to see in the next year if they’ll be establishing this aesthetic farther. Art Central has definitely been successful in differentiating itself apart from Art Basel, Hong Kong’s biggest art fair, and offers a range of artworks that some would feel right at home with.

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