ART BASEL HONG KONG

This year, Kukje Gallery will present a comprehensive selection of works by both Korean and international artists from a wide range of generations. Featured in the booth is a work by the major figure of Dansaekhwa Park SeoBo, Écriture No. 040516 (2004). The painting belongs to his late-Écriture series, reflecting the unique order and spirit of Dansaekhwa through repeated actions and materiality on the canvas. Ha Chong-Hyun, integral to the Korean avant-garde movement, presents his new work Conjunction 24-50 (2024). Through the subtle gradation of white hues in this work, Ha introduces new variations to his existing method of bae-ap-bub, through which he experimented with the materiality and temporality of paint. Ha Chong-Hyun is currently presenting his early works in a solo exhibition at the Art Sonje Center in Seoul, and showcasing the Conjunction and Post-Conjunction series in another solo exhibition Ha Chong-Hyun at Kukje Gallery. Also included is Nucleus 89-40 (1989) by Lee Seung Jio, a pioneer of Korean geometric abstraction, a piece that centers around the artist’s main motif of ‘pipes.’ Through the repeated processes of undercoats, painting, and sanding, Lee produced metallic surfaces, perfecting his post-painterly abstraction.

Also on view is Paper Poem No.26 (2024), by contemporary artist Jae-Eun Choi, currently based in Kyoto. The Paper Poem series pictures ‘portraits of time’ through the traces of time on each page created through layering faded pages of books. Choi is currently presenting her solo exhibition Nature Rules at Kukje Gallery. Kibong Rhee, who explores the fundamental structures and dynamics of the natural world through his practice, showcases his new work Noneplace landmark (2025), depicting a dreamlike landscape near water visualizing the perceptual impact that space has on consciousness. Kyungah Ham presents her textile triptych Phantom and a Map / Poem 01WBL01V1T (2018–2024), which formalizes the period of waiting through horizontally composed color ribbons. This work was produced in collaboration with North Korean artisans and middlemen that connected them with the artist, ultimately embodying the realities of separation. Along with these works, Lee Kwang-Ho visualises the wetlands of New Zealand’s South Island near the Kepler Track in Untitled 4518-2 (2024).

Contemporary artist Haegue Yang’s new work inspired by centuries-old kite traditions of Asia, Airborne Paper Creature – Leaving Red Flutterer Siblings (2025), will also be on view. Adorned with decorative elements made from washi and marbled paper, Punjabi ornaments, and traditional silk headdress paranda, this sculpture suggests the interplay between different species within nature. Yang has opened her solo exhibition Haegue Yang: Lost Lands and Sunken Fields at the Nasher Sculpture Center as well as her touring show Haegue Yang: Leap Year at the Kunsthal Rotterdam, and will participate in the special exhibition The Hong Kong Jockey Club Series: Picasso for Asia—A Conversation at the M+ Museum during the dates of Art Basel Hong Kong. Suki Seokyeong Kang presents her sculpture Warm Round 610 #23-01 (2022–2023) which encapsulates the feeling of warmth through weaving wool tightly around wire mesh. Kang has successfully opened her largest solo exhibition in North America to date, Suki Seokyeong Kang: Mountain—Hour—Face, this past February at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver.

Works by international artists will be presented along with Korean contemporary art. Candida Höfer, widely recognized for her photography of cultural locations and their temporality and history, will present Real Gabinete Português de Leitura Rio de Janeiro III 2005, capturing the interior of a library in Rio de Janeiro built by Portuguese immigrants. Jenny Holzer’s A Deficit of Evidence (2024) is part of her Redaction Painting series, transforming the American Freedom of Information Act into a large-scale abstract artwork. Julian Opie, expresses in Knokke 5. Kukje Gallery Participates in Art Basel Hong Kong 2025 2 / 18 (2021) the pedestrians of Knokke, Belgium at the time of his visit during the peak of COVID-19 restrictions. Ugo Rondinone’s achtzehntennovemberzweitausendundvierundzwanzig (2024) evokes the familiar scenes of ceiling frescoes and infinite spaces through the cloud-shaped canvas. Rondinone is currently presenting the rainbow body at the Aspen Museum of Art in Colorado, USA. Lastly, SUPERFLEX will present Two Flies Staring At Each Other (2024), a work following the literal meaning of a title with two flies placed staring at each other. The flies of the work silently observe the other in a highly artificial arrangement, mocking our anthropomorphizing tendencies to see our behaviors mirrored in other species.

Kukje Gallery also participates in the Kabinett sector, presenting Korean first-generation woman sculptor Kim Yun Shin’s paintings, prints, and sculptures at the booth. Kabinett highlights on the Asia-Pacific region as well as artists of Asian diaspora. Having constructed a distinctive visual language during her time apart from mainstream Korean modernism following her migration to Latin America in the 1980s, Kim has explored materiality with an emphasis on the inherent qualities of trees. Her unique philosophy, ‘Add Two Add One, Divide Two Divide One (合二 合一 分二 分一),’ capturing the cosmic significance of two entities coming together and forming a union as one, and this union becoming divided into two again, encompasses Kim’s artistic philosophy and a way of life. In particular, through her works she examines nature not as a subject of contemplation but as that of ‘add[ing to] one’, revealing in her wooden sculptures and paintings a kind of primordial energy and the voracity of life

Of the works presented in this year’s show, the intense blues and abstract elements in Waves of Joy 2024-6 (2024) evoke a sense of dynamism and primal vitality. A stone sculpture Add Two Add One, Divide Two Divide One (合二合一 分二分一) 2002-749 (2002) from her experimentation with Brazilian jasper in the early 2000s also embodies the reflections on the relations between mankind and nature and the yearning for contact with a higher dimension of existence. Additionally, archival materials are also showcased in the booth, alongside the artworks. The exhibition aims to offer a multidimensional overview of the past half-century of Kim’s practice from the 1960s when she was studying metalworking in Busan, the 1970s when she began ‘Add Two Add One, Divide Two Divide One,’ the 1980s when she moved to Argentina, all the way to the 2000s when she began working with jasper.