Art Basel Hong Kong 2019 was the 7th edition in Asia and their Hong Kong show was held at Wan Chai in Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. Art Basel opened to the public for three days from Friday to Sunday. It features more than 240 top international galleries from all around the world. My first visit to Art Basel was nine months ago in Basel, Switzerlands, June 2018. I think their Hong Kong show was actually quite similar to the Basel one. They were both huge and busy all the time... although the one in Basel was much bigger. I enjoyed my visit very much. I loved the work this year even more. Let's see what I've found there!
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Yuken Teruya (1973) created a series of work Notice-Forest which shows us a delicate tree stands inside carrier paper bags. He works on objects that connects to everyone and reminds us to think about how all these little things matters. We shall slow down a bit from our busy lives from now on. I was so impressed how he could make such a delicate piece from an everyday seen object, trying to show us how an ordinary thing could also be extraordinary.
I found the above work from a distance and I was like 'What could that be?' so I walked closer and closer to the piece. It was so impressive that I couldn't believe they were all garlic peels, things (I might even call it rubbish) that I always threw away immediately. Rivane Neuenschwander (1967) is a Brazilian artist who explores and works with nature and the passage of time. She used organic materials, in this one she used garlic peels, to explore the nature of time, where we could see different ages of garlic peels, from the newest to the oldest, from the left to the right. Her work has a sense of humour. I love this playful artwork very much.
I've seen this 'lady' before when I was in New York. And now she flew all the way to Art Basel Hong Kong. I was standing on the left side, overhearing what others discussed about this artwork, some of them asked if this was a performance art, while some of them asked whether she was real or not. You could actually tell... from the label of the work. LOL Duane Hanson (1925-1996) was a sculptors who made realist sculptures with found objects from everyday observations. His work explores different cultures and cliches from what he saw every day. So this could be one of the scenes that he had seen in his life before, and that 'lady' is just a sculpture that made with bronze and other materials.
I think this is my favourite pieces from the whole show this year. Aki Inomata (1983) made "shelters from around the world" for hermit carbs while they change their shells as they grow. From this exhibition, Inomata displayed 8 "shelters" from eight different cities from Europe and Asia to South and North America. This brings to our mind that migrants changed their nationalities as they immigrated to a new country; does that mean that the people themselves had also changed? Nope, they had just changed their "shelters", they are still them. This piece of work explores how our own self-identity does not affect by the changes of the places where we live.
What's your favourite from this show? Tell me!