6 Artworks to Scout out at Art Basel Hong Kong 2024
Art Basel Hong Kong 2024 is in full swing. Returning to its pre-pandemic scale, this year's edition sees 242 international galleries from 40 countries participate across the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, and beyond in the city.
This year is crucial for Hong Kong's art scene, amid recent criticism highlighting economic decline and business closures. Nevertheless, the fair sees 23 debut participations from galleries across Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas, and with 69 galleries returning after a temporary break from the fair, it seems dealers still see ample opportunity in Asia's art market centre.
Ocula Advisors select their favourite works showing at the fair, which runs from 28 to 30 March 2024. Among them are Chen Kong Fang's still life interiors at Gomide&Co and Almeida & Dale, Sarah Sze's compositionally complex oil painting at Gagosian, and Howardena Pindell's mesmerising spray dot paintings at Victoria Miro.
Willem de Kooning's Untitled III (1968) at Hauser & Wirth
In the mid-1970s, Willem de Kooning was making luminously-hued paintings, congested with lashings of thick oil paint. In 1980, at the age of 75, he set about a radical transformation.
Commonly characterised as his 'late style', the paintings de Kooning produced in his final ten years—which includes Gagosians' Untitled III (1986)—see a more reductive approach to painting that is spare in form and sheer in colour.
Gary Garrels, then curator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, organised a travelling exhibition of these later paintings Willem de Kooning: The Late Paintings, The 1980s in 1995, which completed its international tour at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 1997.
Now Garrels is responsible for Willem de Kooning e L'Italia (17 April–15 September 2024), an exhibition of around 75 works inspired by his two visits to Italy, in 1959 and 1969, opening at Gallerie dell'Accademia during the Venice Biennale 2024.
Organised in collaboration with art historian Mario Codognato and in partnership with the Willem de Kooning Foundation, the show will be the largest presentation of the Abstract Expressionist in Italy, including loans from MoMA in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.
Sarah Sze's Turning and Turning (2024) at Gagosian
It's hard to locate yourself when faced with Sarah Sze's paintings. From afar, they're a snowstorm of paint, acrylic paper, and ink, curated in a coherent cosmos. Up close, the figurative gives way to the abstract, and you're met with a frenetic and disrupted barrage of mark-making.
'Even with the paintings, there is this idea of showing you what you might not be able to see in life, or what the experience would be, so that you can set that anticipation. As you move closer, for example, there's a kind of tipping point of thinking you've seen an image in a certain way, and yet you're seeing it in another way,' Sze told Ocula Magazine in 2020.
Her paintings on both the primary and secondary are in healthy demand. As such, they have landed in important collections globally, including the Tate Collection in London, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Opening during the Venice Biennale, Sze's solo exhibition takes over Victoria Miro Venice (16 April–16 June 2024) with a new moving-image installation alongside a new suite of paintings presented within a simulation of her New York studio space.
Howardena Pindell's Tesseract #12 (2023) at Victoria Miro
Viewing Howardena Pindell's 'Tesseract' paintings (2022–ongoing) is like peering through a microscope to discover striking abstract visions of the world, awash with vibrant hues.
Among Pindell's vast and varied body of work, her large-scale spray dot paintings perhaps stand out the most. These dramatic and dizzying works captivate with their luminous dots and large quadrilateral forms, which seem to ebb and flow between the background and foreground.
In Hong Kong, Victoria Miro showcases a new addition to the 80-year-old American artist's 'Tesseract' series. Saturated with clusters of orange, yellow, and blue dots, Tesseract #12 (2023) might be mistaken for a solar storm, swirling up a mishmash of shapes. Pindell's fascination with the natural world profoundly influences her work, citing her repeated use of circles as representative of an iconic form that appears on a cosmic scale in nature.
Chen Kong Fang's Pinwheels at the Window (1984) at Gomide&Co and Almeida & Dale
Chinese-Brazilian artist Chen Kong Fang's (1931–2012) still life and landscape paintings are on view in China for the first time, presented by São Paulo-based galleries Gomide&Co and Almeida & Dale.
Fang, born in China, relocated to Brazil in 1951 amid political turmoil in his homeland. This move greatly shaped Fang's artistic style as his practice reflects on his experience of living in the West alongside his efforts to reconnect with Chinese traditions.
Fang's 1984 painting, Pinwheels at the Window, offers a quiet interior space with a window peering into darkness. Positioned in the foreground is a pot of pinwheels, sitting on a shelf, while a thorn-covered plant emerges from the bottom of the painting.
In line with much of Fang's oeuvre, this painting explores themes of spirituality and solitude. Through his playful approach to framing and scale, Fang draws attention to ordinary objects, while his fusion of Chinese and Western painting techniques imbues his subjects with intrigue and character.
Fang's work is presented with Brazilian-based Japanese artist Shoko Suzuki. The display explores both artists' practices, which diverge from prevailing Braziliant art narratives.
Cary Kwok's Sit For a While (2024) at Herald St
A space devoid of human presence is a fertile ground for memory—quiet moments charged with anticipation.
Hong Kong-born, London-based Cary Kwok brings Sit For a While (2024) to Hong Kong, an intimate acrylic on paper depicting a half drunk cup of tea, with a pink lipstick stamp embossed on its white rim. Set within a cropped frame, the illustration presents itself almost as a vignette, where viewers are left piecing together clues as to what has gone on before and after Kwok's protagonist arrived at the scene.
Influenced by cinema, Kwok's works on view in Hong Kong all capture a fleeting moment in time, artificially lit in a dreamlike realism. Kwok's knack for framing is one to be envied; clean black and white finishes act as quiet extensions of the vignettes within the frame.
'To me, a framed work can be considered a beautiful object in its own right,' Kwok told AnOther Magazine. 'The colours of the frames should either complement the work or help tell the story.'
London-based Herald St is showing Kwok alongside Naotaka Hiro and Cole Lu.
Paloma Varga Weisz's Wilde Leute 6 (2023) at Sadie Coles HQ
Since Paloma Varga Weisz's exhibition Glass (12 July–19 August 2023) at Sadie Coles HQ in London, the German-born artist has been busy with several shows. Most recently, she transformed Massimo de Carlo Pièce Unique in Paris into her studio over the course of two weeks in January and February 2024.
Varga Weisz's lucent folk figure Wilde Leute 6 (2023) arrives in Hong Kong, accompanied by a selection of watercolour, graphite, and pencil on paper drawings, each depicting portraits of peculiar characters.
The enchanting glass sculpture kneels on a plinth, with a vacant gaze on its face. As light filters through its translucent blue form, the little figure captures a variety of cool tones, casting ever-shifting patterns of light and shadow throughout the day.
Wilde Leute 6 is part of the artist's 'Wilde Leute' series (1998–ongoing), which translates to 'wild people'. Each figure in the series combines human and animalistic characteristics, featuring elements such as bear- or bunny-like ears, that add to the whimsical nature of the work.
Main image: Sarah Sze, Turning and Turning (2024). Oil paint, acrylic paint, archival paper, acrylic polymers, ink, diabond, aluminum, and wood. 289.6 × 362 cm.
