Mini-Art Basel open, Andy Warhol, Yayoi Kusama and Yoshitomo Nara works for auction at Christie’s – Hong Kong art market is buzzing

Galleries report healthy interest at Hong Kong Spotlight by Art Basel fair, Christie’s reports record presale estimates for modern and contemporary art sales

The start of the city’s fourth wave of Covid-19 has not deterred art fans, with queues forming outside the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre

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The start of the city’s fourth wave of Covid-19 has not deterred art fans from attending Hong Kong Spotlight By Art Basel. Photo: Dickson Lee

Published: 3:15pm, 27 Nov 2020Updated: 9:01pm, 28 Nov 2020

This week, Hong Kong is seeing a sharp rise in Covid-19 cases, but you wouldn’t know it from all the events still going on in the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai.

Inside, Christie’s launches its nine-day autumn auctions in Hall 3C on Friday. Next door, in Halls 3F-G, a mini-Art Basel contemporary art fair and this year’s edition of Fine Art Asia opened on Thursday, with gallerists reporting a promising level of interests from local buyers. The centre is also hosting the Hong Kong Jewelry Manufacturers’ Association fair this week.

Hong Kong Spotlight By Art Basel is a 22-booth fair featuring galleries that have a permanent physical space in the city. It is a stopgap in between this year’s cancelled Art Basel Hong Kong (which would have had 245 galleries taking part) and next year’s edition, which has been postponed to May 2021.

Angelle Siyang-Le, the regional head of gallery relations at Art Basel, says the fair limits attendance to 40 per cent of the hall’s capacity (fewer than 500 visitors a day) and she is confident there are sufficient safety measures to protect participants.

Hong Kong Spotlight By Art Basel is a 22-booth fair featuring galleries that have a permanent physical space in the city. Photo: Dickson Lee

Axel Vervoordt Gallery sold half its booth of Yuko Nasaka works on the first day, and 80 per cent of the buyers were from Hong Kong. There are works from the 1960s to the 2010s by the Japanese artist, and prices range from €18,000 to €45,000 (US$21,000 to US$54,000). At least half of the buyers at Art Basel Hong Kong would typically have come from overseas, the gallery estimates.