Who Beat Expectations at Sotheby’s Spring 2022 Hong Kong Auctions?
Bidding cooled noticeably from last year's white glove sales, but several artists still achieved impressive results.
Tomokazu Matsuyama, Something Came Together (2018) (detail). Acrylic and mixed media on canvas. 266.5 by 189 cm. Courtesy Sotheby's.
Sotheby's four Hong Kong sales of modern and contemporary art brought in HK $1.6 billion (US $199 million) last week. Collectors took home nine out of ten works on offer.
It's a significant pull back from last year, when the auction house hoovered up HK $2.1 billion (US $271 million) in just three white-glove sales.
This year's result isn't terrible given the economic climate. Stock markets worldwide have been rocked by China's struggles with the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index plunged from 29,000 to 21,000 over the past year.
Sotheby's sought a boost from the big-spending crypto crowd by accepting cryptocurrency for Jean-Michel Basquiat's Water-Worshipper (1984), which carried an estimate of HK $62–93 million (US $7.9–11.6 million). But with the price of Bitcoin down 33% from April last year, no one was biting.
Among contemporary artworks, the highest prices were realised for Louise Bourgeois' Spider IV (1996–1997) (HK $129 million, US $16.4 million) and Yoshitomo Nara's Oddly Cozy (2013) (HK $112 million, US $14.3 million). Both sold firmly within Sotheby's estimate ranges.
A copy of Banksy's Love is in the Air (2006) also sold in the middle of its range at HK $51 million (US $6.5 million). A copy of the same work was purchased by Particle at Sotheby's New York in May last year for double the price before being resold as fractionalised NFTs.
Among last week's most impressive results: En Iwamura's bronze sculpture Neo-Jomon: Dreaming Girl (2019) sold for HK $630,000 (US $80.3 million), topping its high estimate of HK $400,000 (US 51,000); Jordi Ribes' Untitled (2021) sold for HK $1.4 million (US $178,000), almost six times its high estimate; and Tomokazu Matsuyama's Something Came Together (2018) sold for HK $5 million (US $640,000), more than six times its high estimate.
Ocula Advisor Rory Mitchell also called attention to paintings by Liu Ye and Cheng Xinyi, whose work Aperitif (2018) sold for HK $4.4 million (US $562,000), almost nine times its high estimate.
Mitchell said it was 'a new benchmark for the artist'. —[O]
