It's been a great year for Phillips as they report sales of over half a billion US dollars in the first half of 2021, an increase of 25 percent on 2019, undoubtedly helped by the sale of Gerhard Richter's Abstraktes Bild (940-7) going for USD $12,258,390 (HKD $95,100,000) at their Contemporary Hong Kong sale in June.
With 17 artists setting new world records, it was interesting to see how many of those set were by emerging stars signalling the extraordinary rise in their market demand.
With a high estimate of $96,200, Beijing-born Huang Yuxing's work Bubbles sold at close to $750,000, while Emily Mae Smith's Broom Life went for just over $1.5M, over 20 time its high estimate, and finally the late Matthew Wong's Figure in a Night Landscape surpassing its estimate of $1,030,000 going for $4.7M.
