Celebrity Life

La Prairie’s latest partnership with Art Basel in Hong Kong last month saw the creation of three specially commissioned works by artist Chul-Hyun Ahn, all of which meditate on the meaning of light

When La Prairie initially approached South Korean Chul-Hyun Ahn to collaborate with the brand for an installation at this year’s Art Basel in Hong Kong, the artist wasn’t too familiar with the Swiss skincare line –but then again, he’s probably not the target customer. “I didn’t know about La Prairie products,”he admits,”so I was searching on the Internet, and it turns out it was quite a global company!

“When I logged onto their website, they have products, but also a lot of other content –culture, science. So actually I was impressed. And then we agreed to do the collaboration and they sent me La Prairie samples and I brought them home, and my wife was thrilled.”

[caption id="attachment_138250" align="alignnone" width="3000"] Ahn’s La Prairie exclusive artwork 4 Dots took direct inspiration from the coloured pigments that affect our skin.[/caption]

What was also attractive to the artist was the carte blanche he was given, and the themes: light, colour and reflection, three topics that are already central to his practice. “It was perfectly matched,”says Ahn. “They use light for their best interests, which is to increase and make the natural beauty of skin last longer. I use light to help my concepts become artwork. So we have a common interest, using the same material.” 

La Prairie has spent the last five years decoding the science behind light, upgrading the science behind its White Caviar collection so that it not only increases brightness and decreases pigmentation, but also improves luminosity. Explains Dr. Daniel Stangl, the brand’s director of innovation, “We had to think, what does luminosity mean? What are the factors influence luminosity? This has to do with light, and when we are talking about light, we have to think about how light is really dealing with our skin. As a result we came up with the equation of light.”

[caption id="attachment_138251" align="alignnone" width="2000"] Dr. Daniel Stangl, La Prairie's director of innovation.[/caption]

In essence, when your skin is pigmented –touched by the brown of UV damage, grey from pollution, red from inflammation and yellow from oxidative stress –it doesn’t reflect light. The solution, then, to bringing forth this light, is to erase the offending colour spectrum. In the White Caviar product line, this is done via key ingredients such as Lumidose. “Lumidose decreases the amount of the pigment melanin, the less pigments you have, the less light is absorbed, the more light is left for being reflected, which is a very simple principle. You also need reflection from the surface, but reducing pigments is a key pillar,”says Dr. Stangl.

Ahn, in turn, uses light rather to pose questions that are as timeless as the quest for eternal youth and beauty. “I am using my materials –mirrors and the light –to try to decode my question, my equation, trying to make infinite space and talk about emptiness and physical travelling versus spiritual travelling,”Ahn says.

[caption id="attachment_138254" align="alignnone" width="1800"] La Prairie’s White Caviar Illuminating Pearl Infusion and White Caviar Crème Extraordinaire decode the equation of light.[/caption]

In many ways, Ahn’s perspective adds another dimension to the relationship that exists between art and beauty. “When people are looking at my art, they’re appreciating it and searching for their own space and perspective to experience art and beauty,”he explains.

Art, after all, pervades all parts of the world of beauty, even those most technical. He may be a man of science, but there is art yet in Dr. Stangl’s concepts, and, indeed, his words: “There are many contact points between art and science. Scientists must be very curious; scientists try to be creative in the way that they link facts together which no one else has thought about, that open a new view of biological systems, for example. Art can open your eyes to give you a new view on something that is common. Art is also something that communicates with you, brings something which is inherently in you, out. Art may help to see the world in a different way, and that’s what we do as well, we want a new view of the skin. But it’s the same attitude: curiosity, and coming up with surprising new solutions.”

For more information: http://bit.ly/2U6p6gx

The post Everyday Reflections appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

Art Week has officially kicked off, and as a media partner of Art Basel Hong Kong, we're thrilled to be a part of the international art fair that brings together 242 of the world's top galleries from 36 countries together. The Prestige booth set up shop in time for yesterday’s private viewing, so we invited some of our nearest and dearest friends -- including fashionista Faye Tsui, art and culture writer Diana d’Arenberg, graphic artist Ruth Chao, and more -- to join us for an ‘arty’ cheers. Check out the gallery to see who stopped by our booth.

[gallery ids="136135,136133,136139,136116,136121,136131,136127,136119,136122,136123,136130,136120,136134"]

Don’t forget to come visit us to grab a free copy of the March issue and our Art Basel supplement, and sign up for a chance to win an amazing 3-night stay at CHAO hotel in Beijing.
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Art Basel will open to the public from Friday, 29 March to Sunday, 31 March at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition in Wan Chai.

The post Gallery: ‘Prestige Hong Kong’ at Art Basel 2019 appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

Art Basel may be the main event, but there's plenty more for art devotees to see and do in Hong Kong this month, and the months ahead.

NOGUCHI FOR DANH VO: COUNTERPOINT

M+ Pavillion, West Kowloon Cultural District

From now until April 22
The eighth exhibition at Hong Kong’s museum for 20th- and 21st-century visual culture presents a unique dialogue between noted Japanese-American artist Isamu Noguchi and Vietnamese-Danish artist Danh Vo. It features a wide range of drawings, objects and sculptures by Noguchi as well as selected pieces produced by Vo in the past eight years.

HKWALLS

Wan Chai

From now until March 31
Hong Kong’s annual street-art festival welcomes local and international artists to realise their visions on exterior walls just a stone’s throw from Art Basel in the vibrant district of Wan Chai. Besides a front-row seat to live painting, visitors can enjoy pop-up exhibitions, workshops and special events throughout the week.

UNFOLDING: FABRIC OF OUR LIFE

Centre of Heritage, Arts & Textile

From now until June 30

The inaugural exhibition at the Centre for Heritage, Arts & Textile (CHAT) at The Mills in Tsuen Wan, which celebrates its grand opening on March 16, showcases works and performances by 17 contemporary artists and collectives from Asia. In keeping with the centre’s mission and home at former cotton mills, textiles are woven throughout the works to signify the experiences of textile labourers in the era of globalisation.

[caption id="attachment_135464" align="alignnone" width="1024"] An installation view of Eau de Cologne, Berlin, 2015.[/caption]

EAU DE COLOGNE

Hart Hall, H Queen's

March 27-April 12
The groundbreaking contemporary-art series -- known for establishing a powerful discourse around art, feminism and power -- makes its Asia debut, featuring Cindy Sherman, Jenny Holzer and three more of the seven seminal female artists who participated in the original project in 1983. Also featured are Astrid Klein and Kara Walker, presenting compelling messages about today’s social, political and cultural environments.

[caption id="attachment_135465" align="alignnone" width="759"] Palimpsest, 2016, by Art Central featured artist Hoon Kwak.[/caption]

ART CENTRAL

Central Harbourfront

March 27-31
The fifth staging of the second major fair of Hong Kong’s so-called Art Week welcomes 32 first-time exhibitors to its ranks of 107 international galleries. With 75 percent hailing from Asia-Pacific, expect a range of high-quality contemporary art from established and emerging artists in the region. Check the website for the full programme of talks, performances, partnerships and curatorial projects.

5TH COLLECTORS’ CONTEMPORARY COLLABORATION

Pao Galleries, Hong Kong Arts Centre

From now until April 22

In an effort to understand the phenomenon of contemporary art in mainland China, the Hong Kong Arts Centre and curator Ling Min of the Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts explore the habits and interests of two distinct groups of Chinese collectors: those who are artists themselves and those with their own art spaces or museums. Featured collectors include Guan Yi and Zheng Hao.

ASIA ARTS GAME CHANGER AWARDS HONG KONG

Four Seasons Hotel Hong Kong

March 29
Honouring artists and art professionalsmaking significant contributions to thecontemporary arts in Asia, this gala celebration hosted by the Asia Society is also a chance for major artists, gallerists and collectors from around the world to reunite and reconnect. Past honorees include Zeng Fanzhi, Takashi Murakami and Park Seo-Bo.

SOUTH ISLAND ART DAY

Wong Chuk Hang and Tin Wan Districts

March 29

The South Island Cultural District welcomes art lovers to its growing gallery hub, with 16 local art spaces throwing open their doors for a variety of special events and exhibitions. Another 10 local and international artists have also contributed outdoor installations, while prestigious speakers will discuss art-related topics during the Art World Forum.

[caption id="attachment_135463" align="alignnone" width="812"] Cedar by Asia Contemporary Art Show featured artist Wu Qiong[/caption]

ASIA CONTEMPORARY ART SHOW

Conrad Hong Kong

March 29-April 1
Now in its 14th year, the longest-running hotel art fair in Asia returns to the Conrad Hong Kong with a wide-ranging array of art and art-related programmes. Highlights include a series of Artist Dialogues that enable artists and art enthusiasts to connect with one another as well as more than 2,000 works by artists from Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Malaysia, South Korea, the UK and more.

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Ruinart was founded almost three centuries ago during the Age of Enlightenment and has been collaborating with renowned artists ever since Art Nouveau pioneer Alphonse Mucha created a seminal ad for the house in 1896.

“Art is in the house’s very nature,” says Ruinart’s president Frédéric Dufour. “We are continuing our commitment to art by supporting major contemporary-art fairs, and giving carte blanche to an artist each year.”

For Art Basel Hong Kong 2019, the fair’s global champagne partner has teamed up with Brazilian photographer and multimedia artist Vik Muniz for a series of works to be displayed at the Ruinart lounge.

Described as an ode to the power of nature and its creative flow, Shared Roots is the result of Muniz’s stint as an artist-in- residence during the 2018 harvest in Reims, France. The artist used blackened wood and charcoal to depict the uniquely shaped trees that struggle to survive in the harsh conditions of one of Europe’s northernmost vineyards.

Muniz also captures the relationship between humans and nature, as shown in his depiction of cellar master Frédéric Panaïotis’s hands gripping a vine stock.

“I wanted to express what couldn’t be conveyed using language and present the complexity that goes into creating the exceptional through a creative flow,” he says, in a possible reference not only to art itself but also to winemaking.

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Partnering with Art Basel Hong Kong for the second consecutive year, La Prairie proves once more that art and beauty are the perfect pairing

The worlds of beauty and art have long been intrinsically linked, and that connection is very much alive today in the continuing partnership between two leading Swiss brands: La Prairie and Art Basel.

While the cosmetics industry may be driven by science and innovation, beauty itself would not exist without art. La Prairie’s approach is to use science as an art form, uncovering the factors that contribute to our skin’s glow. Most recently, it has developed a formula that reveals the relationship between light, luminosity and the ageing process: the Equation of Light.

Essentially, our skin is affected by pigments that turn white light into coloured light, decreasing the appearance of luminosity to the naked eye. Whether it’s grey dust, brown sun spots, yellow oxidative stress or red inflammation, these tones interfere with the colour of light reflected off our skin, while uneven texture and loss of collagen interfere with and impair the amount of light reflected.

La Prairie’s White Caviar Illuminating Pearl Infusion and White Caviar Crème Extraordinaire work in tandem, specifically targeting and eliminating grey, brown, yellow and red tones so that the skin can reflect clear, white light.

Each product has its own merits – the Illuminating Pearl Infusion with its exclusive Illuminating Compound and the Crème Extraordinaire featuring the patented Lumidose – but they also share Golden Caviar Extract, an ingredient that is enhanced with an exclusive Cellular Complex to rejuvenate cells with energy and firm skin so that it can better reflect light.

Any artist understands the importance of light and clarity, and while these products are surely a construct of science, their effects are pure art. Softer, silkier and more luminous, your skin will look like it’s lit from within.

For more info: http://bit.ly/2FnSmeL

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As Hong Kong’s Art Month ensues, we're seeing all sorts of creativity spilling out across the city and onto our plates. With art-inspired menus, dishes and cocktails on offer, there's something for everyone to celebrate the arty season. So if gallery hopping isn't for you, here’s a list of 9 other cool art-related things to eat or drink this month. 

Ozone, The Ritz-Carlton

From now until 31 March

If drinkable art is your thing, you can head on up to The Ritz-Carlton’s Ozone, the world’s highest bar, to sample cocktails and tapas inspired by the Bauhaus movement, which combined construction and fine arts in the early 20th century. Created by culinary and bar manager Oscar Mena, bar-goers can sip on artsy cocktails that have been inspired by Bauhaus maestros László Moholy-Nagy, Josef Albers, and Paul Klee. What’s more, artisan mixologist and Asia’s Monkey 47 brand ambassador Zachary Connor de Git will be guest bartending for one night only (Friday, 29 March) with some of his own signature creations.

Ozone, Level 118, International Commerce Centre (ICC), 1 Austin Rd West, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon; +852 2263 2270

CÉ LA VI

From now until 31 March

Art lovers rejoice! You can now eat, drink and simultaneously experience art at CÉ LA VI. A tasting menu featuring six colourful dishes will set the tone with dishes such as oyster & botan ebi to start, and a vibrant beet & raspberry mousse to finish. Wash it down with their exclusive art cocktail, Panthère Cobblers, inspired by French ‘Born Wild’ pop-artist Richard Orlinksi, all the while enjoying the collection of sculptures, courtesy of Opera Gallery, displayed across The Lounge, Sky Deck and restaurant. To end the month on an artistic high, CÉ LA VI will also be hosting a closing party featuring a live performance by dance alchemy production group I AM.

CÉ LA VI, 25/F California Tower, 30-32 D’Aguilar Street, Lan Kwai Fong, Central, Hong Kong; +852 3700 2300

Felix, The Peninsula

From now until 30 May

Get in the mood for artistry at The Peninsula’s 28th floor restaurant, Felix, and enjoy the Five Senses Art Experience menu by Chef de Cuisine Juan Gomez. Created to please all your senses, dishes like crispy king crab pillows will indulge hearing, whilst chargrilled Iberian pork pluma will excite your sense of smell and pan-fried foie gras with glazed plums will tickle your taste buds. But if that’s not enough art for you, The Peninsula -- being the official hotel partner of Art Basel Hong Kong — will also launch ‘Art in Resonance’, a multi-year art program that starts 26 March, in which the hotel will play host to newly commissioned, immersive installations by contemporary artists across the globe.

Felix, 28/F, The Peninsula Hong Kong, Salisbury Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon; +852 2696 6778

Whisk, The Mira 

From 28 March to 22 April

Back by popular demand (for the fifth consecutive year now), is Chef Oliver Li’s ingredient-driven, street art-inspired menu. Reflecting upon UK-born, HK-bred visual artist Szabotage’s pop-up exhibition “Reflections”, the six-course menu incorporates urban and pop culture in its dishes -- including the signature graffiti-style Koi patterns. Along with the meal comes four pop-artsy tipples that also pay tribute to the street art influence.

Whisk, The Mira Hong Kong, 118 Nathan Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon; +852 2315 5999

Dr. Fern's Gin Parlour

From now until 31 March 

The artisanal gin bar tucked in the basement of The Landmark is a favourite most days, but during Art Month, the place is especially popular with bartender Gerry Olino’s art-inspired cocktails. The first of his creations is Flowers in the Snow -- a concoction of infused gin, honey, cream, egg white, soda and local jasmine tea -- instilled by artist Robert Tracy’s mysterious flower painting. The second drink is a must-order simply for its gorgeous presentation; The Blossom is derived from a simple seed, given the love and water needed to transform into beautiful and colourful life, and is made from Whitley Neill Quince Gin, London Orange & Elderflower and edible flowers.

Dr. Fern’s Gin Parlour, Basement Floor, Landmark Atrium, 15 Queen’s Road Central, Central, Hong Kong; +852 2111 9449

Mandarin Bar & Grill, Mandarin Oriental

From now until 31 March

Michelin-starred chef Robin Zavou celebrates Art Month this year with his Palatable Art menu. This time, he’s paired up with artist Konstantin Bessmertny and Benjamin Sigg of Art Advisory to put forth a four-course dinner menu. Each dish is a true work of art as it mirrors, complements, or exudes the feelings and ideas intended by the artist, and now, the chef as well. Special mentions include the caviar, leek and cauliflower starter inspired by Ancient Régime, and the Wagyu beef served with bark and smoked at the table to bring out the five elements, reflective of the piece with the same title by Chinese artist Ji Dachun.

Mandarin Bar & Grill, Mandarin Oriental, 5 Connaught Road Central, Central, Hong Kong; +852 2825 4004

Mumm Harbourfront Party 

27 March

Back for the fourth year now, Mumm Champagne returns to co-host one of Art Month’s biggest celebrations right at Hong Kong’s Central Harbourfront Event Space with Art Central. This VIP party is also the debut of Mumm Grand Cordon Stellar – the first Champagne bottle designed specifically for space travel. Although you may not have any plans to venture past our planet anytime soon, you are however guaranteed an evening that is out of this world, with free-flow drinks and international DJ performances.

Mumm Grand Cordon Stellar Lounge, Central Harbourfront Event Space, 9 Lung Wo Road, Central, Hong Kong; +852 2151 2699

The Lounge, Four Seasons 

From now until 31 March

Sunday afternoons just got better with Four Season’s new Art Frenzy Afternoon Tea set offering. Led by Executive Pastry Chef, Ringo Chan, the interactive tea buffet is an expression of the chef’s creativity in the form of sweet delights. Expect artistic creations in his interpretation of urban Hong Kong, bird cages found in the old parts of Kowloon, and paint tubes inspired by the city’s modern street art. The tea set is available from 2pm to 4pm, or 4:15pm to 6pm.

The Lounge, Four Seasons, 8 Finance Street, Central, Hong Kong; +852 3196 8820

Pirata Group

From 27 to 31 March, during dinner until end of service.

Walking through all the galleries and exhibitions at Art Basel Hong Kong can be thirsty work. Luckily, restaurant group Pirata has us covered with a list of venues across Hong Kong offering complimentary drinks (from glasses of Prosecco to cocktails and bottles of wine) to all Art Basel VIP ticket-holders this month. Visit Chaiwala, Madame Ching, TokyoLima, Meats, Pirata or The Optimist and recharge with a much-needed tipple to keep you going through art month.

Chaiwala, Basement 43, 55 Wyndham Street, Central, Hong Kong; +852 2362 8988
Madame Ching, 5 Star Street, Wan Chai, Hong Kong; +852 2577 7227
TokyoLima,  G/F, 18-20 Lyndhurst Terrace, Central; +852 2811 1152
Meats, G/F, 28 - 30, Staunton Street, Soho, Central, Hong Kong; +852 2711 1812
Pirata, 30/F, 235-239 Hennessy Road, Wan Chai, Hong Kong; +852 2887 0270
The Optimist, 239 Hennessy Road, Wan Chai, Hong Kong; +852 2433 3324

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Slowly but surely, women are changing the art world's traditionally patriarchal landscape. We talk to three experts who are helping to drive change and shift perspectives from the inside out.

Manuela Wirth

Co-founder of Hauser & Wirth, Manuela Wirth is one half of an art-world power couple helming a global network of nine galleries. As one of the world’s most influential gallerists, she’s been a pioneer of championing female-made work for decades.

[caption id="attachment_133263" align="alignnone" width="683"] Manuela Wirth (Photo credit: Paul Wetherell)[/caption]

Tell us about your female artist programme.

We’re very proud of the fact that we represent more women artists than any other gallery -- we started working intensively with women artists long before it became a fashionable talking point. One of the most radical female gallerists, Pat Hearn, introduced us to the work of Louise Bourgeois, Mary Heilmann and Eva Hesse very early in Hauser & Wirth’s history. But really the origin of our in-depth focus on women artists goes back to my mother, Ursula Hauser. Her “discoveries” often found their way into our programme because we also loved the work and wanted to support it professionally. This way, strong women artists, particularly those that have been underrepresented, became an important part of our DNA. In May, we’re celebrating my mother’s 80th birthday by hosting an exhibition of her [all-female] collection at our arts centre in Somerset, UK. Women artists are still sorely underrepresented in museum and gallery shows, so it’s important to me that we use the international platform we have to give voice to their work.

Who are some of your female art heroes?

The ultimate for me is Louise Bourgeois. She was one of the past century’s greatest artists, while at the same time a mother to three children, a wife and a profound thinker. I have admiration for the many women that have juggled family roles alongside a robust artistic practice. Phyllida Barlow is another artist who falls into this category, and her work only became known internationally when she was in her sixties. She quickly grew into one of the most important artistic voices in contemporary art, and even represented her country, Great Britain, at the last Venice Biennale. Ida Applebroog is another wonderful artist. Other women artists that have had a profound impact on me personally include Isa Genzken and Roni Horn, who each show great commitment to their creative practices, and the issues they deal with in their work mean a great deal to me.

How do you see the art world addressing the current imbalance in the representation of male and female artists?

I hope that we’re now living in a time where this balance is being readdressed, and that the art market will soon catch up. I have to believe that women artists aren’t equally represented currently purely because the historical canon favoured men, so the legacies of their female counterparts are not so widely known. This is certainly something we’re working to address by representing many female estates, such as those of Eva Hesse, Maria Lassnig and Geta Bratescu, and by commissioning new scholarship and publications devoted to their work.

What’s it like to run a global gallery network alongside your husband? How does your partnership work?

Iwan and I have been working together for 27 years. We have a shared vision and agree on almost all big decisions, but we also have complementary skill sets. Iwan has always been very spontaneous and is guided by intuition, and it’s this creativity that keeps us on our toes and constantly innovating. By nature I’m more calm, shy and rational, so I help nurture his ideas and shape them into practical plans. Having four children keeps us very grounded and disciplined. Since 2000 we’ve been joined by Marc Payot, our third partner. We feel privileged to work with artists, makers, thinkers. Nowhere else in the world do you meet so many brilliant and interesting people as in the art world.

People have written plenty about the dominant Male Gaze but is there a specific way you would define the Female Gaze?

I don’t know that the Female Gaze can be singularly defined, but in the women artists I’m drawn to I notice a predominant theme in that their investigations stem from their own psychological experience, or focus on exploring the capabilities and limitations of their own body. For example, Alina Szapocznikow made casts of her own body parts, Mary Lassnig developed her concept of “body awareness” painting to explore how her mind perceived her physical presence in the world, Luchita Hurtado literally looked down and painted her own body as she observed it from above, and Louise Bourgeois used her art to work through her emotional trauma. I find this makes for a more charged and meaningful practice than depicting more “passive” subjects.

What excites you about the Louise Bourgeois show?

Our exhibition of Louise Bourgeois in Marchis the first solo exhibition to offer her work in Hong Kong. It will introduce visitors to the overarching themes of Bourgeois’s practice, such as the pull between representing the world around her and her psychological realities. We’ll focus on the final two decades of the artist’s life, and show fabric sculptures, prints, sculptures, and rarely exhibited holograms. The exhibition coincides with Bourgeois’s first large-scale museum tour in China, The Eternal Thread, presented at the Long Museum, Shanghai, and the Song Art Museum, Beijing.

Kate Bryan

A contemporary-art expert and British television presenter who once lived in Hong Kong, Kate Bryan is a curator and art historian who joined the Soho House group in 2016 as head of collections. She’s visiting Art Basel Hong Kong with an eye on acquiring pieces for this city’s Soho House, which opens later this summer.

[caption id="attachment_133262" align="alignnone" width="683"] Kate Bryan (Photo credit: Dino Busch)[/caption]

You’ve been coming to Art Basel since you lived here. How do you feel it’s evolved and what do you enjoy the most?

It’s been an incredible catalyst for the city. I was there from the very first fair and remember being so overwhelmed by the number of kids who came at the weekend. It’s amazing to think they’re now maybe teenagers interning at Tai Kwun. I lived in Hong Kong for four years and left for London in 2011, just as things really took off. Returning to build a collection for Soho House that really speaks of the city and the local artists is such a privilege.

Who are your female art heroes?

Judy Chicago, not just for her pioneering Dinner Party but for her work as an art educator and great thinker. Frida Kahlo, because I’m only human. And Jenny Holzer -- I’m amazed that I agree so much with a woman I’ve never met.

You’ve championed women artists for many years as a curator -- how and why did this happen?

About eight years ago when I was an art dealer I read some shocking statistics about the under-representation of women in the contemporary-art world. After a quick inventory of my own artists’ stable, I realised I was showing nearly 50 percent women and had this huge feeling of relief. But I realised that much more needed to be done. Being silent and inactive is a way of being complicit. Historically, women had a hard time becoming artists but many people don’t realise we haven’t come that far. In North American and European museums it’s said that work by female artists accounts for less than 5 percent [of the total]. One of my favourite young British artists, Sarah Maple, has a piece that reads “Inaction is a weapon of mass destruction”, and it’s so true. I acquired that piece for Soho House in London the second I saw it.

How do you address this in your role?

When I became the head of collections for Soho House, it was an amazing opportunity to acquire female work but also to make an important dialogue happen. A big initiative was Vault 100, on permanent display at The Ned London in the heart of the City of London -- the financial district we associate with patriarchy. I used loaded connotations of the area to make a point about gender inequality and how it affects the art world. Taking the FTSE 100 CEO gender ratio, which was 93 men and only seven women running top UK companies, I inverted it so that we acquired 93 pieces by female artists and seven by men. The response initially was crazy -- people genuinely asked me if they were 93 great women artists in London. It felt so good to prove them wrong! We have work by Tracey Emin, Jenny Holzer, Helen Marten, Sarah Lucas and Lubaina Himid, as well as more emerging artists. It makes me so proud.

There are more female artist-themed shows, but do you think this will move towards thematically organised exhibitions where artists are female? How do you strike that balance between supporting and fetishising female art in 2019?

This is such an important point. There’s not much point in creating a female ghetto, the original feminist artists in the ’70s realised this. There has to be one art conversation with everyone in it. That’s why I shied away from curating all-women shows when I was an art dealer. I felt that selling women together was insensitive to their practice -- they aren’t women artists, they’re artists. As a curator I hope I can create that opens, liberal contemporary and non-gendered context for the work rather than a female art theme.

How do you feel about the current representation of women, their viewpoints and curation in the field?

I'm really optimistic about the growing status and visibility of women at the very top of the art world that will undoubtedly have an impact. Frances Morris runs a very progressive exhibition programme at Tate Modern and Maria Balshaw became the director of all the Tate Museums, making her the first meal director of a national museum in the UK. Nancy Spector occupies a very senior position at the Guggenheim and even the Vatican Museum now has a female director. It's extremely important that women are decision makers as well as men -- it's already affecting what's being shown, validated and therefore sold.

Karen Smith

Director of Ocat Xi’an contemporary-art centre and art director at Shanghai Center of Photography, Karen Smith is an expert in Chinese contemporary art and a writer and curator with decades of experience. She’s lived in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong, overseeing the rise of the Greater China art scene and its greatest names.

[caption id="attachment_133259" align="alignnone" width="768"] Karen Smith[/caption]

You’ve worked extensively in Chinese art. Tell us about how accepting the industry has been with female curators and artists.

It has in terms of how many of the galleries who contribute to the scene here are [run by] women – beginning from critic and curator Liao Wen in the 1980s, the writer Tao Yongbai and younger individuals such as Sun Ning, who was effectively one of the “founders” of Beijing’s 798. But perhaps it’s still true that male counterparts aren’t confident enough to feel comfortable working with women curators to allow them to rise up beyond being underlings.

Tell us about projects you’ve worked on that focus on female artists.

I’ve done several projects -- solo exhibitions such as Qin Jin’s I Wish I Could Be Your Companion for a Longer Time [Magician Space, Beijing 2009]; Miss P [Peili, Platform China, Beijing 2011]; and more recently solo projects for Qin Jin, Carol Lee Meijuan Carol Lee Mei Kuen, Liz Hingley, Ma Qiusha and Peili at Ocat Xi’an. This year we have more coming at Ocat – Hao Jingban, Wu Di, Xiong Wenyun and Edy Ferguson. At the Shanghai Centre of Photography, we’ve had Anna Foxand Karen Knorr, and Gan Yingying and Wang Yingying. It’s important that women support women. I dislike the fact that society today is in a position where we still need to make women a conscious focus. You’d have hoped by now that we’d have achieved a state of natural equilibrium. But since we haven’t, I do what I can as far as possible to support women artists clearly deserving of opportunities.

There are more “female artist”-themed shows, but do you think this will move to thematically organised shows that feature female artists? How would you strike that balance between supporting and fetishising female art in 2019?

This will continue to go in cycles. The argument is found in facts of how short a memory the human race possesses; we adjust to new situations, we integrate and then socio-political and economic situations change and old ideas remerge as we fall back into default modes of self-preservation which require the putting down of one group to favour the social status of another. So, yes, we need these kinds of shows from time to time to remind us of better modes of thinking via-a-vis our less egalitarian proclivities. Personally I try not to put “women” in front of every description and discussion, and instead keep talk focused on the work. To reference to what makes an art work compelling may or may not be related to gender, or the gender of its author. It’s important not to create new divisions by suggesting that women should receive exceptional treatment.

How was this dealt with in China in the rise of its contemporary scene?

In the 1990s, women artists in China felt extremely uncomfortable being corralled into all-women shows. They didn’t want to feel marginalised, or separated from the wider art scene, even though they were often marginalised within it. Shows happened -- the attitudes of the largely male critics were supportive but condescending at best. What was lacking then was a really good public media platform that could debate the fact that artists like Lin Tianmiao and Yin Xiuzhen were breaking moulds and boundaries, and making art that was at the very least as progressive as the next contemporary [male] artist in China. Each generation has produced outstanding women artists in China. The more opportunities that women have to show their work the better. All artists have to know how to handle relationships with curators who may or may not have their own agenda. You can only be fetishised if you let yourself be.

Is the art world consciously moving to address the gender imbalance? Should it?

Yes, and yes. The art world ought to be as liberal and permissive in its thinking as it must be open to creative and innovative activities and ideas. If we really believe that art speaks to people, and is able to convey human ideas and experiences across borders and boundaries, then we’re bound to contend imbalance whenever and wherever we encounter it.

Who are some of your female art heroes?

Generally, Agnes Martin, Sarah Lucas; here in China Cao Fei, Ma Qiusha, Peili, Ju Ting, Wu Di and Alice Wang.

The post How Women Are Reshaping the Art World appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

When Alexie Glass-Kantor begins curating the huge installations that comprise the Encounters section of Art Basel Hong Kong, it’s like the scene in a detective moviewhere the hero finally joins the dots of the mystery. “I basically sit on the floor and do a bit of old-school collaging with print-outs,”she says.

Every October, the Sydney-based curator flies to Hong Kong with Art Basel’s architects and operations team and tries to work out the connection between the dozens of installation proposals she receives from the fair’s participating galleries.

“I don’t go into the process with a preconceived curatorial angle in mind,” she says. “I go in with an open mind. I pare it back, I look for relations between works, I look for diversity and intergenerationality.” When she’s arrived at a satisfying mix of work, she hands her print-outs to the architects. “They render them overnight and see if it’s feasible for them to be installed in time. So it’s a very collaborative effort.”

As Glass-Kantor pored over the proposals for this year’s Encounters, she noticed that many of the works reflected the “disorientation and uncertainty” of an era of social upheaval and global warming, a time when the natural order of things seems to be in the throes of a dramatic readjustment. “There’s an unpredictability that’s amplified through a Trump-era politics,” she says.

[caption id="attachment_133540" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Simon Starling, Zum Brunnen. (Photo courtesy of the artist and Neugerriemschneider)[/caption]

That was combined with an emphasis on materiality that Glass-Kantor found interesting. “Last year, I had a number of works that had a performance or durational element,” she says. This year, artists seemed to be questioning the very fibre of their work, which Glass-Kantor thinks is a response to the ephemeral nature of life lived in the digital realm.

“When you’re living in a time when things are shape-shifting so quickly around us you turn to the things that you have at hand,” she says. “Labour and production embed a sort of meditation on process and engaging with your environment.”[inline_related_article article_id="132974"]

As she decided on the installations that will be shown at Art Basel, Glass-Kantor wasreminded of Maya Angelou’s poem Still I Rise. Like the poem, she says, this year’s Encounters is “a call to action and aproposition to re-energise, re-incarnate, re-innovate and rise”.

It might seem a bit strange, then, that the first work many visitors will encounter is Lee Bul’s Willing To Be Vulnerable -- Metalized Balloon, a 10-metre-long replica of the Hindenburg, the Zeppelin airship that exploded and crashed in 1937. Lee has long been fascinated by the limits of utopian ideas, and her work has been described by critic Laura Cumming as “beauty with menace”. That is certainly the case here, but there is room for optimism: after all, destruction is an opportunity for rebirth.

Zhao Zhao mines similarly dark terrain with In Extremis, an interactive installation that draws from the artist’s 2018 show at Tang Contemporary Art in Beijing. “He would see dead cats pulverised on the highways and would go around drawing chalk outlines around the cats,” says Glass-Kantor. The work raises questions about mortality but also perseverance -- and maybe even rebirth. “It’s this sense of reincarnating something that was meaningless and seeing how we can reconfigure.”

[caption id="attachment_133538" align="alignnone" width="772"] Joël Andrianomearisoa, The Cartographies of Desire, The Space Between Us. (Photo courtesy of the artist and Sabrina Amrani)[/caption]

Other installations include Homage to the Square by Jose Dávila, which explores the influence of artist Josef Albers, who posited that the colours we see are not actually the colours that physically exist. As visitors pass through Dávila’s installation, kinetic mobile sculptures move and refract colour. In City in the Sky, artistic duo Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset take Hong Kong’s densely packed cityscape and invert it, hanging it upside down.

Many of the artists in Encounters may be little known to the Art Basel public, including the Indigenous Australian Tony Albert and Mit Jai Inn from Thailand. “I try to make sure that at least half my artists may be well known in their local contexts but maynot be so familiar on the Art Basel circuit,”says Glass-Kantor.

After taking over Encounters from curator Yuko Hasegawa in 2014, Glass-Kantor and Art Basel Hong Kong director Adeline Ooi whittled down the number of installations from 30 to 12, to allow for larger installations. She’s also made a point of encouraging as much contact between visitors and the works as possible.[inline_related_article article_id="132897"]

“As much as I can, I try to make sure nothing is fenced off. It’s a bit ironic,” she says with a laugh. “I’m such a klutz, I’m always dropping and breaking things.” So are many others, and the first time she curated Encounters, “there was this heavy sense of apprehension about audiences being able to touch and engage with installations”, she says.

Unlike the fairs in Basel and Miami Beach, Art Basel Hong Kong draws a large number of visitors from the general public, including schoolchildren and families. Some works have been damaged by rambunctious fair-goers in the past. But Glass-Kantor says audiences have become increasingly sophisticated over the years.

And in any case, engaging with the installations of Encounters is not the same as looking at an image on a wall. From the time it begins life as a series of print-outs on the floor, Encounters is a physical experience. “We’ve moved away from a time where educating an audience is anachronistic,” says Glass-Kantor. “The audience is a collaborator.”

The post Curator Alexie Glass-Kantor Explains Art Basel’s Encounters Section appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

It's hard to believe that 2019 marks only the seventh edition of Art Basel Hong Kong, considering how much our city has transformed since the inaugural fair swept through the halls of the Convention & Exhibition Centre. From West Kowloon to Wong Chuk Hang, Hong Kong is now bursting with galleries, cultural centres, artist studios and auction houses. Still, at the centre of it all, stands Art Basel. Below, our guide to what to see at this year's fair.

10 to Watch

Among the 242 galleries participating in this year's Art Basel Hong Kong, 21 are here for the very first time. All are influential in their own markets and are sure to bring something unique to the show. Here we introduce our 10 must-sees.

HUNT KASTNER

Prague, Czech Republic

[caption id="attachment_133061" align="alignnone" width="683"] Untitled, 2019. (Photo credit: Michal Czanderle)[/caption]

The first exhibitor from the Czech Republic in the Hong Kong show -- the gallery was opened by an American and a Canadian in 2006 to support and promote contemporary Czech artists -- has been participating in international art fairs since 2007. It presents an installation by Anna Hulačová entitled Pathetic Poetic in Art Basel’s Discoveries sector for emerging artists.

GALERIE GRETA MEERT

Brussels, Belgium

[caption id="attachment_133066" align="alignnone" width="746"] Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Greta Meert[/caption]

Founded in 1988 as Galerie Meert Rihoux, this well-established gallery has always focused on minimal and conceptual art. Besides introducing Belgians to innovative international artists, it was one of the first in Europe to show works by the Vancouver School. The current exhibition presents some 50 years of work by eminent American minimalism artist Robert Mangold.

RICHARD NAGY

London, United Kingdom

[caption id="attachment_133068" align="alignnone" width="940"] Woman Disrobing (Edith Schiele), 1917. Private collection. Courtesy of Richard Nagy Ltd., London. Photo by Leopold Museum , Wien/Manfred Thumberger.[/caption]

Modernist art dealer Nagy started London’s Dover Street Gallery in 1989, followed by his eponymous space in 2010. Among his many specialities are German expressionism, Symbolism and, in particular, the works of Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt. He stages one museum-quality exhibition a year and participates regularly in art fairs throughout Europe and the US.

RICHARD KOH FINE ART

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

[caption id="attachment_133071" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Herstory, 2018. Courtesy of Richard Koh Fine Art[/caption]

Committed to emerging practices and a diverse range of media, Richard Koh Fine Art has been promoting contemporary art throughout Southeast Asia since 2005. Its travelling pop-up, Richard Koh Projects, reflects the latest developments in the regional art scene. For its ABHK debut, the gallery presents Your Past Is My Future by Bangkok-based Thai artist Natee Utarit.

REGEN PROJECTS

Los Angeles, United States

Founded in 1989 as Stuart Regen Gallery, this contemporary-art specialist has expanded several times and now occupies a 20,000-square-foot space on Santa Monica Boulevard. It’s become known for groundbreaking and large-scale exhibitions by well-known artists such as Catherine Opie, Raymond Pettibon and Charles Ray. Its most recent show featured multimedia works by Glenn Ligon.

NOVA CONTEMPORARY

Bangkok, Thailand

[caption id="attachment_133074" align="alignnone" width="894"] Tin Pone Chay, 2018. Courtesy of Nova Contemporary[/caption]

With a focus on promoting exceptional Thai artists, this Bangkok-based gallery has helped spread the gospel of contemporary art across Southeast Asia and beyond. For its ABHK debut, it showcases emerging Burmese artist Moe Satt's explorations into "the consequences of political uprising, violence and erasure" in his home country.

GALERIE BÄRBEL GRÄSSLIN

Frankfurt, Germany

This well-established gallery, in business since 1985, focuses on German positions of the 1980s and ’90s, such as Werner Büttner, Georg Herold and Markus Oehlen -- all of who have been represented by the gallery since the start of their careers. It’s also been instrumental in the development of the Frankfurt art scene and its local talent.

CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN

Copenhagen, Denmark

[caption id="attachment_133075" align="alignnone" width="741"] Julia Haller at Christian Andersen[/caption]

Open since November 2010, Christian Andersen works with emerging local and international artists to stage solo and group shows in its 3,000-square-foot former garage in the Nordvest area of Copenhagen. Current exhibitions include a solo show of works by Astrid Svangren as well as a group show by Tom Humphreys and Rolf Nowotny.

PAULA COOPER GALLERY

New York, United States

The first art gallery in New York’s Soho district celebrated its 50th anniversary last year, having expanded to showcase not only conceptual and minimal art but also music, dance, poetry and other creative performances. Its debut at ABHK includes works by Tauba Auerbach, Beatrice Caracciolo, Julian Lethbridge, Sol LeWitt, Paul Pfeiffer, Atsuko Tanaka and Robert Wilson.

EMPTY GALLERY

Hong Kong

The host city’s own debutant may be closed for renovations until late March, but it is geared up for its Art Basel debut. It kicks things off with Tishan Hsu: 1984-1997, the Asian debut of New York-based artist Hsu’s works from his most prolific period and a continuation of his return from a self- imposed exile from the art world.

Short Cuts

Art Basel is a maelstrom of aesthetic confrontations blitz-scaling over a frenzied three-day period. But where to be, what to see and why to bother? Stephen Short presents his cheat sheet below.

MARY CORSE

Berkerley, United States

[caption id="attachment_133046" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Untitled (white inner band, white sides), 1999. Courtesy of Kayne Frffin Corcoran, Lisson Gallery and Pace Gallery.[/caption]

American artist Mary Corse gets her first exhibition in Asia through Pace at H Queen’s, showing eight newly painted works that play to her strengths -- perception, properties of light and ideas of abstraction. Corse uses glass microspheres in a limited palette of black, white and red acrylic paint to create simple geometric configurations that take on greater than conventional luminescence. As a result, Corse’s work doesn’t just represent light, but embodies and refracts and shifts and tilts it. Opens March 26

ASIA ART ARCHIVE

Hong Kong

For the entire month of March, Asia Art Archive puts performance art under the microscope. Form Colour Action showcases Lee Wen’s sketchbooks and notebooks for the first time. Zhang Peili, widely considered the father of Chinese video art, discusses the role of performance in his career at its annual art lecture, and at Art Basel The Body Collective examines the evolution of performance art in Asia from the 1970s.

ELAINE YAN LING NG

Hong Kong

[caption id="attachment_133048" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Courtesy of UBS[/caption]

Everyone’s favourite Hong Kong artist, Elaine Yan Ling Ng, is back, this time under the auspices of UBS’s Cultural Programme. The Chinese-British designer has conjured an installation that explores global air quality (or, more precisely, the lack thereof) in Hong Kong, Shanghai and other major cities. Nexus is fed by data from air-quality monitoring stations, and analysed by the Evidence Lab, a specialist research facility within UBS.

LEE BUL

Yeongju, South Korea

[caption id="attachment_133051" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Courtesy of Deepix[/caption]

If you’re having a moment, milk it. Lee Bul, on the back of last summer’s phenomenally successful Hayward Gallery show, brings her stunning Zeppelin to Encounters, and shows Perdu from her recent Untitled series in the Kabinett section of Art Basel, through Lehmann Maupin. Her retrofuturistic imagery is rooted in biology but collages materials such as human hair with acrylic shards to broaden these concepts beyond the individual body.

SEAN KELLY GALLERY

New York, United States

[caption id="attachment_133054" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Mariko Mori, Plasma Stone IV, 2019. Courtesy of the artist and Sean Kelly Gallery, NY.[/caption]

Sean Kelly shows at Art Basel Hong Kong for the seventh consecutive year with works by a number of its artists, among them Mariko Mori. The multimedia phenomenon of the 1990s is displaying new work in the form of sculpture. Produced using technically advanced methods, these luminous pieces centre on Mori’s inquiry into the mysteries of the universe through her deepening interest in unobservable energy.

SOTHERBY'S

There’s no thirstier recreation than hiking the labyrinthine halls of the HKCEC, so why not cap things off with a case of Château Mouton Rothschild? Sotheby’s is auctioning 75 limited-edition Versailles Celebration Cases featuring five of its vintages with labels by artists Giuseppe Penone, Anish Kapoor, Bernar Venet, Jeff Koons and Lee Ufan. Auction on April 1

LISSON GALLERY

London, United Kingdom

[caption id="attachment_133056" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Courtesy of Lisson Gallery[/caption]

It’s all go at Lisson. The London gallery opens a space in Shanghai (its Asian debut) on March 22, and brings an embarrassment of riches to Art Basel. Where to start? Ryan Gander, Ai Weiwei, Julian Opie, Djurberg & Berg -- and that’s not even the main event. There’s also Wael Shawky’s hand-carved wood work, Laure Prouvost’s intricate tapestry work, and Carmen Herrera’s Estructura Amarilla plus so much more.

The post What to See at Art Basel Hong Kong 2019 appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

Neo Rauch's canvases are dense panopticons, the figures he paints trapped in their own story, frozen in time among other lost souls condemned to the same fate. The stories the paintings tell are just as easily interpreted as misinterpreted: twisting roads that lead to haunted houses or burning furnaces, oversized beetles performing for or preying on their human companions, and often a stern-looking woman chastising an exhausted man hiding behind a canvas or hunched over a table with his head in hands.

“They come from my mind, my soul and therefore must be of me, but they are also not me,” their creator says, when we meet at his studio on the top floor of an old cotton mill in Leipzig, Germany. The 58-year-old Leipzig native goes on to describe how the pieces flow out of him, at times summoned through excursions or trips, such as a visit to Crete, and other times bubbling up from his childhood or seemingly thin air.

“I approach the canvas like a white haze. I spend hours, days, weeks meditating into that fog until the images start to surface in front of my eyes,” he says. “I often paint a figure over and over again, the shoulder or arms or head all need to be of a very specific weight and proportion before they are finished and sit perfectly in the frame -- one figure could send the whole cosmos another way.”

[caption id="attachment_132910" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Photo credit: Uwe Walter[/caption]

Rauch says a “quick” painting could take around a year but it’s never as linear as that. And his studio definitely attests to the fact. The space is filled with canvases, some on easels, others stacked against walls, table legs, chairs. In fact, every available surface seems to be supporting a frame. There are also books, CDs, bottles of wine and whisky, and even a beautiful array of house plants. It’s every bit the studio you’d imagine, down to the thick crust of oil paint coating it all. The only rather uncanny fixture is a little pug, who dominates the space in a loveable way that reveals a hint of Rauch’s sweeter side.

When asked to explain his process, Rauch says, “In general my work bundles all the images, reflections and information into one stream of consciousness. I then occupy that particular point of internal and external influences, and react to that. I paint from that starting point always. That’s the moment when the image finds me.

[caption id="attachment_132921" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Photo credit: Uwe Walter[/caption]

“I’m a rather chaotic person and so the canvas tames my mind. My images reflect on narratives that I find inside me. They are somehow inconsistent and hence painting them gives them a form that holds a certain plausibility; saying that, they do keep me awake at night. They are a waking dream. I do see one consistent trope in my expression and that is that the form has to be legitimate and has to tame the pandemonium that is my internal landscape.”

The air in the studio is heavy with turpentine and oil. It’s a smell that reminds me of lilies, I tell Rauch. He smiles and says, “Every studio has its own scent.” We talk briefly about lilies being symbolic of the moon, a space of light and death, and this leads to talk of his formative years and how he began to paint.

Rauch’s life has been as tumultuous as his paintings -- skewed awkward reveries that would haunt anyone, well, forever. At birth he was christened Neo, an ancient Greek prefix meaning “new” or “revived”. It was just four weeks later when he lost his mother and father in a train accident, and a year after that when the wall was built that would divide Berlin for almost three decades.

[caption id="attachment_132917" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Photo credit: Uwe Walter[/caption]

Rauch, who recalls despising the wall, grew up in East Germany under strict Socialist order, where art was seen as political. It had to fall under the doctrine of Socialist Realism, a genre that dealt with proletariat depictions that were often easy to grasp conceptually in order to be accepted by the dominating powers. There were, however, certain younger artists like Rauch who didn’t aspire to such norms and would hold bootleg shows in living rooms and other private spaces.

[inline-quote author="Neo Rauch"]"Art is about leaving the airtight concrete surfaces and entering the marsh districts, the peripheral areas."[/inline-quote]

When I ask him if his own history and story influenced his paintings, he answers while slowly turning the pages of a book of his works from the early ’90s -- sullen dark blurs of abstract shapes and rough lines entitled Dromos or Gesang. “We all, in the first years of our lives, unconsciously absorb and memorise certain things, without reflecting on them or sorting through them in an intellectual or logical manner,” he says. “These memories, this material is getting stored in subterraneous archives, it is unconsidered and unsorted. It might reappear and emerge much later or it may not, but it’s always there.

“For example, if you’re a painter, it’s likely you archive colours and shapes. You can see that certainly inside me. I have a lot of stored aesthetics (in my mind) from the early ’60s. The way I accessed this was much more intense, say, 20 years ago,” he continues. “Today I’m not that focused on infantile perception -- or should I say I’m not really pulling from that memory bank. But these early childhood experiences definitely have been a great source of inspiration for me once I found my real artistic/painterly identity around 1993.

“This was when I finished the first period of self-reflection. Until that point, I was going down all different routes, trying to find my own language. I had idols and role models, but I was mostly wandering around in foreign territory, disconnected from my peculiar and authentic self.”

Rauch and his peers fell into a genre that was dubbed the New Leipzig School, a somewhat controversial term for a group of artists who emerged in post-reunification Germany in the 1990s and was championed by the likes of Eigen art gallery, curator Christian Ehrentraut and dealer Gerd Harry Lybke.

[caption id="attachment_132915" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Photo credit: Uwe Walter[/caption]

The self-described “very angry young man”, who studied at the famous Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig, found painting to be an outlet for his penchant for rebellion and irony, and railing against the Concrete Art movement that had declared the medium dead. “I’ve found it’s about creating openings on the canvas that allow the human mind to sink into them,” he says. “Art is about leaving the airtight concrete surfaces and entering the marsh districts, the peripheral areas, the zone of transition where language fails, where I as the painter have to trust my instincts and my perception.

“That’s how I find my place in the production of art. That’s the domain of art. If I find I can explain everything rationally, it’s not art. It remains only an airtight surface under some neon lights framed in the studio or gallery or seminar room or in the latest Documenta.”[inline_related_article article_id="104737"]

When I visit, Rauch is preparing for Propaganda, a solo exhibition at David Zwirner’s Hong Kong gallery that opens on March 26 in conjunction with Art Basel. His debut solo exhibition in Asia features 15 new paintings and is accompanied by a new catalogue with a short story by novelist and playwright Daniel Kehlmann.

A tiny mock-up of the space sits in the corner of the room. “Would you like to see the show?” he says, laughing. The canvases overwhelm even the model of the gallery, squeezed on to its tiny walls. As I look down into the rooms, I feel as if I could walk straight into his paintings. The familiar figures Rauch depicts are there, all hegemonic in a European aesthetical sense. They mostly conform to traditional gender norms and roles, yet in these new paintings they’re dressed as clowns, magicians, animal tamers or jesters doting more on the mystical.

There’s something morbid about the figures, almost like the walking dead. I once heard someone refer to them as “sleep walkers”, but this description seems somehow too comfortable. They’re frozen and cast into their roles forever, unable to escape.

[caption id="attachment_132923" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Photo credit: Uwe Walter[/caption]

When asked if his figures are inspired by sleep and dreams, Rauch explains that he no longer uses his dreams as inspiration but instead paints as if he could be dreaming. He speaks in depth about the practice of becoming lucid and the point of view that creates.

“We, of course, are not able to grasp dreams in any rational way,” he says. “They have their own mechanics. Time changes and proportions become irrational. And then there is, of course, the demonic component of every sleeping pattern. There’s often something eerie to dreams. Freud spoke of it as if a dream could be likened to some sort of hairline crack in the familiar. For example, when we dream we encounter a familiar person and recognise that there’s something slightly different to them. It might not even be that person. That’s the weirdness I try to capture and for me, that is a space where painting as a form of expression can become very interesting.”

This hairline crack seems to have found its way into Rauch’s new body of work -- you see it depicted in curtains that fall away into the sky or openings that slip into passages of worlds all connected by rhizomes of rooms. They could be likened to works by MC Escher, although they’re never as regimented and nor do they simulate one pattern for one frame.[inline_related_article article_id="112921"]

Rauch’s paintings seem more to traverse between frames. “There are periods in the studio, and each canvas then becomes familiar to the others,” he says. “Like a family, they exist next to one another and therefore they begin to take on characteristics from the others. That’s why you see recurring motifs. They almost become genetically connected, as they’re formed in this room.”

It’s a very romantic notion of painting, I tell him. “Well yeah, sure,” he says with a smile. “It’s about re-enchanting the world.”

Re-enchanting or possessing? This is the question I pose to Rauch, as all art aims to possess the viewer in the sense that the eyes cannot look away. “If we encounter real art, which isn’t always the case just because someone claims it to be art, we experience a moment of absence of gravity. Paused time,” he responds. “We become unhinged, taken away from any rational frame of reference we might have held before. Something is talking to us that’s not entirely human, such as a painting, and it’s sucking us into a parallel universe. In any case, a painting has to have the ability to imprint itself on to someone’s retina to call itself art.”

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Art Basel mounts its seventh Hong Kong exposition next month, with 242 galleries filling the halls of the Convention and Exhibition Centre with modern and contemporary art from around the world. The Hong Kong show is one of three annual Art Basel extravaganzas, the others being the original, founded in 1970, in Basel, Switzerland, and Miami Beach, which premiered in 2002 after the September 11 attacks forced the organisers to postpone the North American launch by one year. The Hong Kong iteration is focused in particular on showcasing exceptional art from Asia and the Asia-Pacific region.

[caption id="attachment_116270" align="alignnone" width="1712"] Liu Kuo-Sung, Landscape, 1963[/caption]

Of the 242 galleries chosen by the seven-person selection committee – including such art-world heavyweights as Massimo De Carlo, David Maupin of Lehmann Maupin, Bo Young Song of Kukje Gallery and Zhang Wei of Vitamin Creative Space – more than half have exhibition spaces in the region. That includes seven galleries dedicated to emerging or Asian artists moving into the main Galleries sector for the first time, with Hong Kong represented by Galerie du Monde and Tang Contemporary Art.

The host city is represented by a total of 25 galleries this year, while nine highly influential galleries from the United States and Europe make their Art Basel Hong Kong debut. Southeast Asia also enjoys a strong presence, with Richard Koh Fine Art presenting Thai artist Natee Utarit and Nova Contemporary showing works by Burmese artist Moe Satt, among many others.

In addition to the Galleries sector, with its extensive range of high-quality works from 196 of the world’s leading art galleries, the show features the Insights and Discoveries sectors as well as programmes dedicated to film, large-scale installations and panel discussions on art-world topics.

Insights, as the name suggests, offers an insightful look into Asian art history through works by important artists from the region. This year 21 galleries present one or two artists each, including Hong Kong’s Empty Gallery with works by New York-based Tishan Hsu, Shanghai’s Don Gallery with an exhibition by painter Li Shan and New Delhi’s Gallery Espace with 30 years of work by Zarina Hashmi.

[caption id="attachment_116275" align="alignnone" width="1697"] Gerasimos Floratos, Untitled, 2018.[/caption]

Discoveries, meanwhile, shifts the focus to emerging contemporary artists from around the world. Highlights of this year’s show, presented by 25 galleries, include South Korean artist Jong Oh, Los Angeles-based artist, writer and curator Aria Dean, and Czech artist Anna Hulačová, who is being presented by the first Czech exhibitor to join the Hong Kong show. Christian Andersen, Nova Contemporary and Tabula Rasa Gallery are among other first-time exhibitors.

Impossible to miss – by virtue of size and prominent positioning – is the Encounters sector, 12 institutional-scale installations placed along the four meridians that run through the two cavernous exhibition halls. The diverse pieces have been selected by curator Alexie Glass-Kantor under the theme “Still I Rise” – a call to action inspired by the Maya Angelou poem of the same name. The transcendent works range from a 10-metre-long replica of a Zeppelin by Lee Bul to an upside-down installation of a modern cityscape by Elmgreen & Dragset.

The final exhibition sector is Kabinett, a precisely curated set of projects returning for its third year. The 2019 line-up is still to be announced but is expected to feature a diverse range of media as well as artists both established and emerging.

[caption id="attachment_116272" align="alignnone" width="1706"] Wu Chi Tsung, Still Life, Date Unknown.[/caption]

Also still to be announced are the Film and Conversations programmes, but visitors should be prepared for a variety of special screenings and dialogues surrounding the global contemporary art scene. Stephanie Bailey, an experienced art writer and editor, returns to curate Conversations for the fifth consecutive year while Li Zhenhua, founder and director of Laboratory Art Beijing, continues to oversee the always-exciting Film programme.

Visitors to this year’s Art Basel Hong Kong can also enjoy access to a wide range of local exhibitions and institutions, from the gallery scene as well as museums such as M+ Pavilion (showing Noguchi for Danh Vo: Counterpoint), Hong Kong Arts Centre (the fifth Collectors Contemporary Collaboration, among other exhibits) and the Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile (Unfolding: Fabric of Our Life).

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