Young Hongkongers are proving it is possible to own an art gallery before you turn 30, as long as you bypass the city’s rapacious landlords. Their galleries are not in homes doubling as businesses, or hidden away either – they sell contemporary art in venues that attract (when the city is not suffering a surge of Covid-19 cases) a fairly respectable crowd. In 2018, a group of creatives started a business which, intriguingly, is only identified by a Chinese radical (a component of a Chinese character). Pronounced “mihn”, the radical is shaped like a roof with a chimney, which reflects the business’ purpose of sheltering precarious, fledgling creative projects. Mihn also houses an electronic-music club and, from this month, a record label. Laura Zhang, a 28-year-old artist and co-founder of the gallery, explains that having these three different revenue streams allows Mihn to support fresh talent and nurture strong relationships within the art and music community “through fair financial models”. It hosts one-night-only exhibitions in its Sheung Wan space on Hong Kong Island that doubles as a club, before moving the shows online. Its buzzy opening nights attract a very different crowd from other galleries. Those drawn to Mihn tend to be younger than 40, and do not see themselves as art collectors. Instead, they are happy to pay up to HK$2,000 (US$260) for an irreverent print about sex and censorship by local artist Claudia Chanhoi, for example. Its business model allows the gallery to charge a lower-than-average 20 to 30 per cent commission on the sale of original works. Elsewhere in Sheung Wan, a new company called Young Soy Gallery will host an exhibition inside a Goods of Desire (G.O.D.) store during the final three weeks of the lifestyle brand’s lease at design hub PMQ. Young Soy Gallery – its name is a play on self-deprecating Cantonese slang – was set up two months ago by Shivang Jhunjhnuwala, 26, and British freestyle skier Alexander Glavatsky-Yeadon, 28. They were both born and raised in Hong Kong, but met a few years ago in Los Angeles in the United States where Jhunjhnuwala was attending university and Glavatsky-Yeadon was training for the 2018 Winter Olympics. The gallery has a permanent space in Ap Lei Chau, an island in Hong Kong Island’s Southern district, but the two want to host pop-up exhibitions at different venues so that each show will feel different from the last. Jhunjhnuwala hails from a family of entrepreneurs ( his father founded the Ovolo Group of hotels and his mother is a restaurateur) and is put off by the limitations and “sameness” of white-cube galleries in Hong Kong. “Since most of the artwork we consign is under HK$50,000, having a gallery space in Wyndham Street in Central would not make sense [because of the high rent],” he says. The gallery takes a 35 per cent commission on online sales and levies 50 per cent for art sold through a physical exhibition, such as the upcoming G.O.D. show, which will feature paintings by Ross Turpin, Tyler Jackson Pritchard and Gedvile Bunikyte. The higher commission is because the shop takes a cut in lieu of rent. “G.O.D. is prominent in the design scene and edgy, so they resonate with our tongue-in-cheek approach,” says Jhunjhnuwala. The fact that the shop is closing means that they are free to repaint some of the walls inside to make the art stand out more. The gallery is in talks with other businesses that will host future exhibitions, he adds. Other gallery models with a similarly nimble set-up have appeared recently, such as last year’s debut of the Hong Kong Arts Collective and Schoeni Project ’s recent pop-up exhibition in a Causeway Bay walk-up building with no lift. As the team at Mihn points out, keeping costs down and selling more affordable art is only a means to an end. When you attract a large, diverse group of patrons, you build a different community outside the usual elitist circle and established modus operandi of the art world. Then, perhaps, something truly new can be created. Young Soy Gallery’s “The Bridge to Triumph” can be viewed inside G.O.D., SG03-G07, G/F Staunton, 35 Aberdeen Street, Sheung Wan, 11am-9pm, December 10-26.