The Collectors Series: Art Basel
Hannah Leung
Background
The most anticipated Art event of the year’s back! Art Basel, taking its name from its quaint Swiss hometown, comes off the heels of the successful (controversial?) Miami Beach edition to show once the best in contemporary art again in Hong Kong. The show reflects the host city and region across its range of galleries, content and program.
The event gives galleries a chance to display their work for the collectors, museum directors and curators who will be pilling into Hong Kong just for this event.
What to Expect
Now in its fourth edition, Art Basel will showcase 239 galleries, half of those drawn from APAC region, from a total of 35 countries. The Hong Kong show will be divided into different sections.
Galleries is the main sector and features 187 modern and contemporary art galleries. The Insights sector highlights work specifically from Asia and the Asia-Pacific region, while the Discoveries sector features emerging artists. The Encounters and Film sectors showcases large-scale installations and films by and about artists.
The Conversations and Salon series extend the conversation through talks, panel discussions and lectures that explore key issues facing the art industry.
Silver Egg Picks
Auckland-based Starkwhite’s presentation of a site-specific installation ‘Yellow Structure’ (2016) by New Zealand artist Richard Maloy (b.1977)
Location: Encounters sector
Get your selfie game on: ‘Yellow Structure’ looks like a mound of a golden structure, perfect for creative hash-tagging. But there’s more than meets the eye; a closer look reveals that the gilded golden mound is made of degradable industrial materials like cardboard, paint and tape.
Takashi Murakami, Jellyfish Eyes, 2013. Special Film Screening. (Running time 100 minutes)
Location: Theatre 2 at Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre
Date: Friday, March 25, 4pm – 5:40pm.
The film brings the renowned Japanese artist Murakami’s fictional characters to the screen for the first time alongside human characters. The story is set in a small village in the Japanese countryside with references to the Fukushima catastrophe in 2011.
Museums: Public, Private, and the Space in Between’ panel featuring top names in Asia
Date: Friday, March 26, 6pm to 7pm.
An interesting panel featuring prominent artists, iconoclasts and curators in the region:
Heman Chong, Artist, Singapore
Pi Li, Sigg Senior Curator, M+, Hong Kong
Philip Tinari, Director, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing
Mimi Brown, Founder of Spring Workshop, Hong Kong
Johnson Chang, Director, Hanart TZ Gallery, Hong Kong
Moderator: Charles Guarino, Publisher, Artforum, New York
Show Info
When: March 24 – 27, VIP Collectors Preview on Thursday March 24; “Friday ART Night” on Friday March 25
Where: Conrad Hong Kong, Pacific Place
Tickets :Two tickets for the Asia Contemporary Art Show are available for HK$220 at hkticketing.com. Tickets at the door are HK$220 per person.
Hannah Leung American-born and raised, Hannah Leung spent most of her life in New Jersey watching bad television. After four years of breathing in fresh, New England air during college, she moved to Beijing where she worked in PR and edited the Lifestyle section for a State-owned newspaper for four years. Having not purchased an air purifier the whole time, she moved to Hong Kong, where she continued writing (and gave her lungs a break).