Many relationships need a breather here and there, and that includes those between galleries and art fairs.
This year, New York dealer Edward Tyler Nahem returns to showing at Art Basel Hong Kong after eight years away. Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art does not have a gallery branch in Asia, and Nahem said he felt hampered by not having “boots on the ground” there.
He added that with so many fairs around the world, “I don’t want to spread myself too thin.” Nahem has hired some local talent to help him prepare for the fair and to assist in his booth.
“We’re coming back because of this new moneyed generation,” he said of younger Asian collectors. “We hope there’s an unbridled interest and an ability to buy.”
The fair will take place March 28-30 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center, and Nahem is among the 69 dealers returning after a hiatus, including Galerie Lelong & Co. and Kurimanzutto.
That is one of the reasons the fair is returning to what it calls its “pre-pandemic scale” this year — referring to the size of the fair in 2019 and before — with 242 dealers on hand, an increase of 37% over last year.
Although Art Basel — which also stages fairs in Basel, Switzerland; Miami Beach, Florida; and Paris — does not release the number of dealers who applied to show their wares, that total far exceeded the available slots for Hong Kong, said Vincenzo de Bellis, Art Basel’s director of fairs and exhibition platforms.
The renaissance comes at a time of major change for Hong Kong, as the city’s government passed sweeping security laws Tuesday that target “external interference” in the city and that some analysts say could have a chilling effect on business there. Nonetheless, the fair plans to continue as scheduled.
“At this stage, we have no indication that Article 23 will have any impact on the way we operate,” a representative for Art Basel Hong Kong wrote in an email. “We have never faced any censorship issues at our shows, nor have we been asked to do anything differently since the introduction of the National Security Law in 2020.”
The event is also happening at a time of increased competition among newer Asian fairs, notably Art SG in Singapore, established in 2023, and Frieze Seoul, in South Korea, which had its first edition in 2022.
“We are happy these other fairs have opened,” de Bellis said. “It reinforces the position of Hong Kong. We have a super strong fan base that’s very loyal.”
Grace Rong Li, an art adviser who lives and works in Zurich, said “no fair can compete” with Art Basel Hong Kong. “The brand is very powerful.”
Li, who is Chinese and has many clients from China, is a former gallerist who watches the market closely, which she said had cooled a bit from its heights.
“It’s a collector’s market,” Li said. “In the last few years, speculation was very high. Now, as a collector, you have more time to decide on a purchase.”
The Encounters portion of the fair dedicated to large-scale works will have 16 projects this year, including Contingent Spheres by South Korean artist Haegue Yang, best known for her large installations. The two sculptures in rattan combine traditional textile motifs from the Philippines with the bold geometry of 1960s op art.
This year’s fair will have a “pervasive theme of East-West convergence,” Angelle Siyang-Le, director of Art Basel Hong Kong, said in an email.
She gave the example of Alisan Fine Arts, a gallery with spaces in Hong Kong and New York, which is showing Chao Chung-Hsiang’s paintings, including “Golden Garden” (1988). The works blend traditional Chinese ink techniques with Western art influences, and Siyang-Le said they display a “deliberate intent to bridge cultural boundaries.”
The fair organizers also pointed to a strong slate of both solo booths and focused presentations that spotlight work by Asian artists. One comes from Johyun Gallery, based in Busan, South Korea.
As part of the fair’s Kabinett program, for discrete presentations within booths, Johyun’s booth has a separate area for works by painter Park Seo-Bo, who died last year. He had 15 solo exhibitions with the gallery, and his obituary in The New York Times called him a “pillar of the Korean art world.”
The lineup includes Park’s “Ecriture No. 190403” (2019), a work on canvas in pencil, acrylic and oil.
Johyun, which also has a gallery space in Seoul, has participated in Art Basel Hong Kong several times.
“We think there’s a special character to this fair, because it attracts so many different kinds of collectors,” said the gallery’s senior director, Minyoung Joo.
Outside the Kabinett works, the rest of the booth features makers of different ages.
“We chose artists that represent each generation of contemporary art,” Joo said, noting that about 80% to 90% of the artists the gallery shows are Korean.
The fair includes galleries from 40 countries and territories, including many from the United States and Europe. Around half of the dealers have a space in Asia.
Holly Braine, director of sales for Annely Juda Fine Art of London, noted that her gallery skipped Art Basel Hong Kong last year in favor of Art SG; this year, it is participating in both.
“They are a huge financial burden,” Braine said of fairs. “So we have to negotiate the right balance.”
The Annely Juda booth largely focuses on works by Leon Kossoff (1926-2019), known for his London scenes and his portraits, and Elizabeth Magill, a painter of moody landscapes.
“Neither has been extensively sold in Hong Kong before,” Braine said. “Instead of a classic mixed booth, we wanted a deeper dive.”
She added of their differing painting styles, “There are more points of contrast than comparison.” The works include Kossoff’s 2005 “Self-Portrait” and Magill’s “Duggans Bay” (2022).
One local Hong Kong dealer, 10 Chancery Lane Gallery, has been participating in the fair since it was called Art HK, before Art Basel took over — staging the first Art Basel Hong Kong in 2013.
“The advantage of being in your home city is that you can run to the warehouse,” said the gallery’s founder, Katie de Tilly, of her option to rehang part of her booth if needed.
De Tilly is a California native who founded her gallery in 2001.
“I wanted to bring Western art to Asia,” she recalled. “There were very few galleries at the time. But I saw there was a boom in the art scene in Asia that was little known in the West, so I started to go that direction.”
Her slate features several sculptures, which de Bellis said he was noticing across gallery lineups this year.
“People are finally getting back to sculpture this year, which may have gotten a little lost lately,” he said.
Chinese artist Wang Keping, who is based outside Paris, will be represented by three carved works in different woods, including Couple à l’enfant, wc_040 (2018), made out of acacia.
A piece by Vietnamese multidisciplinary artist Bui Cong Khanh titled Northern Heritage (2018), an intricate screen carved out of jackfruit wood, will also be in the booth. The artist also has a much larger installation currently on view at the local museum M+, Dislocate (2014-16).
For the third year in a row, Art Basel worked with M+ to commission a special project at the museum, which will projected on its facade during and after the fair. This year’s artwork will be a film by artist and filmmaker Yang Fudong, “Sparrow on the Sea,” shot in Hong Kong in black and white.
De Bellis said that such projects are part of an effort to engage people outside of the fair walls.
“For me, it’s a natural extension of what the fair is,” he said. “It’s no longer just a trading platform; it’s a catalyst for the attention of the whole community.”
Inside the convention center, Nahem of New York sees his booth as an opportunity to feature big names with a worldwide following. He specializes in secondary market work, meaning art that has been bought and sold before.
His presentation includes one of Alex Katz’s signature portraits of women, “Carmen” (1998). Katz, 96, recently had a solo show at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.
Jean-Michel Basquiat, one of the late 20th century’s most sought-after makers at auction, is represented by the painting “Cash Crop” (1984), with an asking price of $5.8 million.
Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, who turns 95 just before the fair starts, has become a favorite of the market and the public, with crowds flocking to see her “Infinity Rooms” and then posting their experiences on Instagram.
Nahem is offering Kusama’s “Infinity-Nets by Gold (Tofwqwo)” (2007). “Her legend keeps gaining steam,” he said.
Many dealers have sold works by the prolific artist, but few have known her personally, as Nahem once did. Kusama lived in New York from 1958 to 1975, and when he was a young man, Nahem met her in the late 1960s, when she was staging avant-garde events around the city.
“I was there at one of her nude happenings, in Forest Hills,” he recalled, referring to the neighborhood in Queens. “She and a few others got out of a VW bug nude and pranced around in the middle of Continental Avenue, by a subway station. Cop cars showed up, but they were long gone by then.”
