Art Basel Hong Kong 2023:
8 Artworks to Seek Out

1. Michaël Borremans' The Gift (2008) at Zeno X Gallery

Michaël Borremans' exquisite portraits are a challenge to interpret. Merging technical mastery with unsettling subject matters, the Belgian-born artist will have you in awe and bewilderment.

The Gift (2008) is a continuation of the artist's use of puzzling narratives, depicting a figure radiating a ghostly, porcelain sheen. Teasing us with a glimpse of a portrait, Borremans' subject appears incomplete with a missing limb.

Speaking to Ocula Magazine in 2018, the artist discussed how painters like Goya and Velázquez have influenced the dialogue of his paintings.

He explains, 'These painters and their technique, they're most suitable for me and my temperament, because the way you paint has to do with attitude and temperament. That's why painting continues to remain an interesting medium, because every artist can find his own language.'

Though the Ghent-based artist's oeuvre borrows from the baroque style, his paintings are distinctly contemporary. Borremans' portraits are vividly real, almost rendering his subjects' breath on the surface of each canvas.

2. Nolan Simon's Trinacria (2023) at Canal 47

Born in 1980 in Detroit, Michigan, Nolan Simon creates almost photorealistic portraits that are cropped to keep his subjects anonymous.

In Trinacria (2023), the American painter deftly captures a mundane moment that feels both personal and communal. Three pairs of sock-clad feet—two in Birkenstock sandals, one in Crocs platforms—feature in a parallel line, surrounded by a patchwork of tiled floor that gives the space a near-clinical atmosphere.

Its title, Trinacria, comes from the ancient Greek name for Sicily, meaning three-pointed. Simon's three subjects point their feet in the same direction in what appear to be different stretches. His composition implies his subjects are attending some kind of fitness class, yet, in line with Simon's oeuvre, viewers are left in a state of ambiguity.

Concerned with the gravity and grammar of images and questions surrounding the social role of the painter, Simon's paintings laud subjects of contemporary life— photorealistic, but tightly cropped to arouse curiosity.

3. Danh Võ's untitled (2021) at Galerie Chantal Crousel

Religion is commonplace in the sculptures of Danish-Vietnamese artist Danh Võ.

Accordingly, the artist's presentation with Galerie Chantal Crousel features an alabaster relief of The Adoration of the Magi nativity scene inside a wooden crate.

Speaking to Ocula Magazine in 2016, Võ explains, 'I was raised Catholic and went to church every Sunday, and hated it. But today I feel fortunate to have been raised with this crazy iconographic imagery.'

Over in Paris, Võ's sensational installation, Tropaeolum has arrived at the Bourse de Commerce. Taking over the central Rotunda, onlookers are met by trunks of oak trees held up by imposing wooden structures used in construction.

The wood's ties to Robert McNamara (former U.S. Secretary of Defence and architect of the Vietnam War) speak to Võ's family's wartime exile from the East Asian country. While its setting responds to the expansionist worldview depicted by 19th-century painters on the Rotunda's base.

4. Yu Youhan's Ah, Us! 12 (1998) at ShanghART

Aligning with his wider body of work, Yu Youhan presents an acrylic-on-canvas portrait that is critically relevant to contemporary narratives concerning the structure of cultural identity in China.

In Ah, Us! 12 (1998), Yu expressively renders faces in an earthy colour palette. His portraits are made up of heavily layered brushstrokes and cool shades that recall Expressionist portraits from the early 20th century.

A central figure in Chinese art following the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, Yu's painting highlights one stage of the Shanghai-based artist's developing oeuvre.

A graduate of the Central Academy of Art & Design in Beijing, Yu has been the subject of a number of retrospectives in Asia, including at the G Museum in Nanjing in 2022 and Long Museum in Shanghai in 2016.

5. Kati Heck's GUR (2023) at Sadie Coles HQ

Kati Heck has gained high praise for her sophisticated manipulation of oil paint, watercolour, and gouache.

Old Master influences and potent realism coalesce in Heck's striking portraits. The Düsseldorf-born artist's practice combines precision with bizarre detail to deliver a surreal body of work.

In GUR (2023), Heck portrays a young girl lost in thought as she reclines on an armchair. Rendered in oil paint, the painting evokes a sense of drama in the mundane. The artist's peculiar painting magnifies a moment in time, immortalising her subject.

Heck plays with the boundaries of light and shadow in her compositions. Her subject's glowing skin radiates a fervent energy that mimics the vibrancy and vigour of a young person, yet her expression emerges as though she is bored or perhaps frustrated with the world around her.

Last year, Heck's painterly mastery was the subject of several solo exhibitions including a presentation at Tim Van Laere Gallery in Antwerp.

6. Peter Saul's Bizarro Paints a Still Life (1998) at Venus Over Manhattan

Venus Over Manhattan devotes their Hong Kong booth to the revered Peter Saul, whose first solo presentation in East Asia showcases a mix of important historic works alongside more recent paintings.

Produced in 1998, Bizarro Paints a Still Life is one of the more recent works on display (aside from a 2022 acrylic on canvas) depicting Bizarro, the anti-hero and enemy of the comic hero Superman.

In a gloriously lucid palette for which he has become known, we are met with the usual melting pot of paraphernalia whirling around Saul's canvases. A giant toothbrush protrudes from a table, whose legs (with shoes) could be confused for those of Bizzaro. A mug of tea with wings, a parrot smoking a cigarette, and a book reading a book take centre stage in the surreal world of Peter Saul.

7. Ali Banisadr's Axe to the frozen sea within us (2021) at Thaddaeus Ropac

Guided by synesthesia, the turbulent swirls of Ali Banisadr's paintings emanate a sense of motion and an element of nausea.

Born in Tehran, Banisadr draws inspiration from art historical references, including the Persian miniature tradition, Dutch Masters, and Abstract Expressionism, as well as personal experience.

Axe to the frozen sea within us (2021) is particularly notable for its monochromatic palette, a departure from the vibrant blue, red, and gold-tinted hues of the artist's usual work. Disordered, gestural strokes compete with segments of meticulous brushwork. The canvas overspills with energy and communicates a spectrum of motion that appears to be in constant flux.

Ropac offers visitors a chance to immerse themselves in Banisadr's semi-abstract, semi-figurative worlds: allusions to an amalgamation of figures; hints of a realm laden with ice; sharp abstract forms overlap and swell between figurative markings. The same works entered the collection of the Benaki Museum in Athens in March 2023.

8. Lynne Mapp Drexler's Press (1969) at Karma

The remarkable paintings of Lynne Mapp Drexler have become somewhat of a rediscovered feature across exhibition, art fair, and auction circuits.

Drexler had been painting prolifically on the remote Monhegan Island in Maine until her death in 1999. However, like many women artists of her time, her artistic prowess did not receive the recognition it deserved.

Yet a staggering auction result for Herbert's Garden (1960) at Christie's in May 2022, followed by a major exhibition, Lynne Drexler: The First Decade (2022) at Mnuchin Gallery and Berry Campbell Gallery in New York, point towards a renewed and buoyant confidence in Drexler's work.

'Drexler's best paintings achieve that quality rarely found in abstraction, by which our initial perceptual reaction begins to slowly unravel, revealing memories wrought from the natural world whilst stirring the inner parts of our subconscious,' explains Ocula Advisor Rory Mitchell.

In Hong Kong, Karma present Press (1969), a small painting imbued with all the rich tones and layered depth known to the artist's celebrated larger paintings.