The Hong Kong Art Fair, Asia’s most prestigious contemporary art fair, took place May 27th to the 30th. Hong Kong is a popular entryway into the Asian market because taxes are low for galleries and collectors. In addition, since Hong Kong was a British colony, English is spoken everywhere.

Veuve Clicquot installation by Tom Dixon at the entrance of the fair

The West made its presence known at the fair. Big players such as Gagosian and White Cube had gigantic booths showing their biggest Western names. White Cube brought formaldehyde works by Damien Hirst whose name is synonymous to breaking auction records.

This Damien Hirst piece is a skull and flying dove frozen in motion. In the background is his infamous butterfly painting.

PACE, who represents big names Zhang Huan and Zhang Xiaogang, made an interesting statement with their booth. Instead of filling their booth with these two giants of Chinese contemporary art they showed blue-chip international names with a few pieces from Zhang Huan and Zhang Xiaogang therefore stating that the collectors present at the fair would not only be interested in Asian art but also Western brand names. This follows the news of the world record $106.4 million USD purchase of a Pablo Picasso by a Chinese bidder at Christie’s in New York earlier this month.

Zhang Huan’s cow-skin Buddha face

In my personal opinion, the size of the fair and the caliber of galleries was extremely impressive but every booth was very conventional and commercial. No one took risks. 2010 was the first year for many galleries and some were prepared for the market, others were just testing the waters. But at the end of the day, the HK Art Fair is the strongest fair in Asia and it could be a future contender to important international fairs such as Basel.

Financial Times: ART HK10 the Gateway to China
Chinese Take the Art Market by Storm
Major sales to Asian based collectors at ART HK10
ARTinfo: HK Art Fair the next Basel?