Art Basel in Hong Kong: city’s small galleries shine through with memorable displays
From DNA testing to a compilation of Hong Kong buildings, from Chinese scrolls to bamboo mobiles, there were plenty of local attractions from Hong Kong galleries at this year’s Art Basel fair in the city
Art Basel week in Hong Kong this year was a particularly wonderful conglomeration of international artists, critics, galleries and collectors. But even with superstars such as Jeff Koons and the Guerrilla Girls in town, a number of smaller, local galleries still managed to shine through amid an exhausting avalanche of visual and mental stimulation.
Take a 360-degree virtual interactive tour around Art Basel Hong Kong
At a.m. space’s Art Basel booth, the works in Wong Kit-yi’s “Magic Wands, Batons and DNA Splicers” exhibition were sold on 99-year-leases, a reference to Hong Kong’s peculiar land rights and also, a brilliant way to counter the capitalistic nature of the art market.
Two bona fide biochemists from City University of Hong Kong were also on site and claimed to “genetically embed” the sales contract into the purchaser’s DNA, which takes caveat emptor to a whole new level.
As one of the scientists involved explained to the Post, he could in theory find out a huge amount about everyone related to the person whose cheek he swabbed, just as Cambridge Analytica harvested information from the 50 million people who were “Facebook Friends” of the 270,000 individuals who offered the company information about themselves.
11 Instagrammable displays at Art Basel Hong Kong 2018
Beneath Emily Allchurch’s sunny photo montages at Karin Weber Gallery’s Art Central booth lurks a dystopian vision. Her new Hong Kong landscape is the latest in her Tower of Babel series, and it melds dozens of familiar landmarks, both sacred and profane.
It was probably one of the most Instagrammed works of the whole week as visitors competed to identify buildings such as the Wong Tai Sin Temple and the Central Plaza entrance.