HONG KONG – Ebullient, energetic, exceptional – blue-chip galleries lavished praise on Art Basel Hong Kong’s (ABHK) triumphant post-pandemic comeback, which attracted 86,000 visitors from March 21 to 25.

Top museum directors such as Uffizi Gallery’s Eike Schmidt, American record producer and artiste Pharrell Williams and Swiss businessman Uli Sigg – the largest private collector of contemporary Chinese art – were spotted at Asia’s largest art fair.

The thronging fair reaffirmed Hong Kong’s position as Asia’s top art market destination, in a great reversal of fortunes for a city which saw its largest pro-democracy protests in 2019, followed by one of the world’s strictest pandemic controls from 2020 to 2022.

“Hong Kong is back,” said Galerie du Monde founder Fred Scholle. Some, like blue-chip gallery David Zwirner’s senior director Patricia Crockett, went as far as to say: “Hong Kong is even greater than before.” 

Some of the biggest sales include a reported US$9 million (S$12 million) sale of American digital artist Beeple’s kinetic sculpture. Japanese “princess of polka dots” Yayoi Kusama’s Pumpkin (2022) went for US$3.5 million to a private collector in Asia.

Singapore-based artists and galleries welcomed the art world’s return to Hong Kong, reporting healthy sales.

Fost Gallery sold two works from installation artist Donna Ong’s Chromatic Gradations series for a total of $20,400. Yavuz Gallery, which represents Alvin Ong, sold the Singaporean painter’s Light Of The World to a private institution in Europe. Ota Fine Arts sold works by Young Artist Award recipient Hilmi Johandi and visual artist Tan Guo-Liang.

At Gajah Gallery and STPI’s booths, Asia-based private collectors bought works by Charles Lim Yi Yong, Heman Chong and Suzann Victor – all of whom had once represented Singapore at the Venice Biennale – as well as Jane Lee. 

In Art Basel’s Encounters section, which featured large-scale installations, home-grown Yavuz Gallery sold Ukrainian artist Stanislava Pinchuk’s The Wine Dark Sea (2022-23) for US$240,000 to an institution in Asia. 

Also at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, Art Central drew 40,000 visitors, the largest crowd in its history. The fair, which usually takes place in Hong Kong’s Central Harbourfront, was housed beside ABHK for the first time.  

This year’s art fairs were given a financial boost by the Mega Arts and Cultural Events Fund, which subsidises large-scale international events and aims to lure visitors back to the city.

Up to HK$60 million (S$10 million) is being pumped into four events this year, including the two art fairs. The fund, with a committee chaired by real estate tycoon and art collector Adrian Cheng, comes under the newly formed Culture, Sports and Tourism Bureau.

The fund supported four on-site programmes at Art Central, including an enchanting large-scale art installation at the fair’s entrance by Shanghai-born artist Yang Yongliang which showed off the Greater Bay Area’s nighttime skyline. 

Beyond art fairs, the whole city turned out for Hong Kong Art Week.

The West Kowloon Cultural District, backed by a HK$21.6 billion endowment from the Hong Kong government, finally took its official bow in front of international visitors, as most of its venues launched during the pandemic.

The district boasts the much-lauded M+, a museum dedicated to global visual culture, and cultural venues such as the Xiqu Centre for Chinese opera and the Hong Kong Palace Museum, which displays artefacts from Beijing’s own museum. 

Gallery owner Sadie Coles said: “M+ is a revelation – an outstanding new museum that raises the bar in terms of architecture and curatorial rigour. This has exponentially expanded the impact of this week locally and internationally.” 

Auction house Phillips, which unveiled its new headquarters across from M+, held its inaugural 20th-century and contemporary art evening sale on March 30, and marked a 65 per cent increase in sales figures over 2022. 

Phillips’ chief executive Stephen Brooks said: “This development allows us to further build our business in the region, transitioning from a limited set of offerings held twice annually to a fully fledged sale calendar throughout the year.”

Other auction houses are also expanding their presence in Hong Kong. Christie’s will more than quadruple its current 7,000 sq ft space for galleries and salesroom when it moves into The Henderson building in 2024. 

Sotheby’s, celebrating 50 years in Asia, announced it will move into new spaces measuring a total of 50,000 sq ft in 2024. 

Beyond art districts, crowds savoured Hong Kong’s bustling gallery scene. At Tai Kwun, Myth Makers Spectrosynthesis III – an exhibition of Asian LGBTQ art – had a constant stream of local and international tour groups. 

While Art Basel’s 177 galleries in 2023 is below its pre-pandemic peak of about 240, ABHK’s new fair director Angelle Siyang-Le was optimistic. 

The 35-year-old told The Straits Times: “We know that people’s confidence in Hong Kong is still high and the enthusiasm has been growing incredibly since the quarantine measures were lifted.” 

She said sign-ups for this year’s fair were high despite applications closing in June 2022, when Hong Kong still showed few signs of lifting pandemic restrictions. 

“We think that very soon, we will be able to go beyond even pre-pandemic levels.”

While Singapore galleries found the fair encouraging, they observed that sales were trickling in more slowly. 

Gajah Gallery gallerist Jasdeep Sandhu, 56, said: “In 2019, I could go home on the first day.” 

But he notes that collectors might have been slow to buy into the fairs’ openings: “The restrictions here were eased only very recently. As a collector, you would plan for these arts events in your calendar way ahead.”

STPI gallerist Rita Targui, 53, concurred, adding that 2024’s edition of ABHK will be a more accurate indication of the fair’s performance. 

The galleries that ST spoke to all noted the large turnout of East Asian visitors. What was clear to blue-chip galleries like David Zwirner, said Ms Crockett, is that they are seeing many more young collectors from China and Hong Kong. 

“Often, their entry point is an artist from a younger generation,” she said. “They are all very keen to be educated and you can engage in great conversations, which usually leads to talks about some of our more established artists.”

Singapore galleries noted that the pool of South-east Asian collectors at ABHK was smaller. Ms Targui said: “There were definitely a lot more South-east Asians at Art SG than here.”

The inaugural Art SG – dubbed South-east Asia’s largest art fair – launched in Singapore in January and attracted close to 43,000 visitors. Its launch and that of Frieze Seoul in September 2022 were widely seen as potentially challenging Hong Kong’s dominance in the art market. 

But Hong Kong’s valiant recovery this year may challenge this narrative.

Singaporean Chong Huai Seng, 72, art collector and founder of The Culture Story who attended both ABHK and Art SG, said of the Singapore fair: “If you try to compete on an international level, you will be no different from the bigger international fairs. For collectors, there is no chance of any discovery.”

He bought a work by Japanese artist Shintaro Miyake – an artist he was unfamiliar with – at Tomio Koyama’s booth at ABHK. He also cited the example of Art Dubai – the Middle East’s leading art fair, which has developed a distinct identity since 2007 – where he discovered new works by regional artists.

“Art SG would need to figure out how to have a more regional perspective,” Mr Chong said, adding that this need not necessarily mean South-east Asia. 

“There is no point in competing (with Hong Kong and Seoul). We have to complement.” 

Hong Kong entrepreneur and art collector Kevin Poon – who opened an outpost of his Hong Kong- and Beijing-based Woaw Gallery in Singapore during Art SG – said both cities have “their own unique strengths and opportunities”.

Noting the new energy and potential in Singapore, the 42-year-old added: “One area where Singapore can improve is to offer more educational workshops to help nurture the general public and the next generation of artists and collectors, to further expand the art scene in the city.”

Mr Chong related an unnamed gallerist’s anecdote comparing Art SG’s visitors with those of Frieze Seoul: “In Singapore, people tend to be a bit shy and quiet. As a result, you don’t get the impression that they are as interested.” 

STPI’s Ms Targui thinks that the more fairs, the merrier for the regional art landscape. “If all three art fairs push on at their maximum levels, all the better for Asia. We want these strong, impactful fairs that the global arts community is interested to fly in for.”

• The writer was hosted by the government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.