ART BASEL HONG KONG 2025

This edition of Art Basel Hong Kong will present the recent trends in Asian contemporary art through artists who delve deeply into themes such as media, cultural identity, and social commentary, based on different thematic focuses, techniques, and materials.

Through a focus on identity, artists reinterpreting historical narratives and offering new insights into self-awareness will be featured. Artists who reinterpret historical narratives and offer new insights into self-awareness through a focus on identity are introduced. CHEN Yujun (b. 1976, China), one of the influential artists in Chinese contemporary art, tightly connects emotions between his hometown and personal experiences, exploring themes of family, identity, and space through the lives of immigrants passed down across generations. His brother, CHEN Yufan (b. 1973, China), focuses on issues such as memory, history, and time, creating works that oscillate between abstract and figurative concepts, shaped by his personal memories and cultural understanding. Kohei NAWA (b. 1975, Japan) uses tools and paradigms of technology to examine objecthood, perception, and our understanding of the material world in the digital reality. KIM Byoungho (b. 1974, Korea) creates geometric sculptures that combine vertical city images with the concept of artificial nature in gardens, resulting in works where shapes, resembling fruit at the ends of straight lines, form a unique balance that paradoxically reflects the distinct aesthetics observed in modern civilization. Meanwhile, AN Gyungsu (b. 1975, Korea) slowly reproduces the sensations beyond each object and scene through painting. Over the past decade, he has focused on the landscapes of the suburban areas between cities, transforming the embodied sensations into the language of painting.

Arario Gallery presents OK Seungcheol (b. 1988, Korea) for the first time, an artist who has been exploring the issue of authenticity from the perspective of the post-digital era. His process emphasizes the interaction of images in various forms and textures, both inside and outside, and the coexistence of lightness and seriousness in the printed outer skin, offering a new perspective on authenticity.

The understanding of material properties has historically played an important role in art, and works by artists who emphasize innovation in the creative process and techniques will also be presented. LEE Jinju (b. 1980, Korea) blends traditional Korean painting techniques with contemporary sensibilities, using unique materials such as handmade pigment “Lee Jeongbae Black,” unbleached fabric, and animal skin glue to create canvases that explore themes of multiplicity and time. Yuki SAEGUSA (b. 1987) focuses on Japanese traditional landscape painting and Northern European Flemish painting, mixing the unique memories of materials with her thoughts and bodily gestures to construct “nowhere” scenes. Subodh GUPTA (b. 1964, India) utilizes mass-produced everyday objects to address issues of productivity, mass consumption, consumerism, and the resulting waste, conveying profound messages about society and the world through his works. GWON Osang (b. 1974, Korea) is known for his “photo-sculpture” series that blends the flatness of photography with the three-dimensionality of sculpture, proposing new forms of sculpture through variations in material. His works, which are covered in photo collages, question conventional notions of sculpture.

ARARIO GALLERY will showcase the innovative works of CHEN Yujun (b. 1976), CHEN Yufan (b. 1973), Kohei NAWA (b. 1975), KIM Byoungho (b. 1974), AN Gyungsu (b. 1975), OK Seungcheol (b. 1988), PARK Seo-Bo (1931-2023), LEE Jinju (b. 1980), Yuki SAEGUSA (b. 1987), Subodh GUPTA (b. 1964), and GWON Osang (b. 1974) at Art Basel Hong Kong. These influential Asian artists will showcase the diversity of Asian contemporary art and its representation on the international stage.