Celebrity Life

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.”

The post Artist Neo Rauch on His Paintings and His Upcoming Hong Kong Exhibition appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

Once again, Cirque du Soleil takes Dallas by storm with its magnificent production of Amaluna. On January 20th, Upscale Living Magazine was invited to experience a behind the scenes peek at rehearsals, backstage training and a visit to the costume area, which houses more than 1,000 costumes pieces. Written and directed by Diane Paulus, Amaluna […]

The post Upscale Living Magazine Goes Behind the Scenes with Cirque du Soleil Amaluna appeared first on Upscale Living Magazine.

The Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards is an annual competition for photographers of all ages to enter their hilarious snaps and stand a chance to win great prizes. We spoke to Paul Joynson-Hicks, one of the organizers of the competition, and asked him a few questions. Paul, what is the purpose of the competition? It is […]

The post The Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards – Conservation Through Humor appeared first on Upscale Living Magazine.

On November 17, 2018 guests gathered at Glenn Beck’s Mercury Studios in Irving, Texas for the M1Ball benefiting Mercury One. The working radio and TV studio provided an incredible venue for this special event benefiting the nonprofit organization founded by Beck and his wife, Tania. The 501(c)3 foundation based in Dallas is a humanitarian aid and […]

The post Mercury One M1 Ball Empowers People to Take Action Through Faith, Hope and Charity appeared first on Upscale Living Magazine.

On November 3, 2018, The Crow Museum of Asian Art held its Second Annual Jade Ball at the Belo Mansion in downtown Dallas. Entitled, The Crow at Twenty, this year marks two decades of presenting diverse cultural exhibitions, programs and educational outreach to the community. Continuing with this legacy, Gala Chair, Mrs. Carmen Hancock, gave […]

The post Inside the Crow Museum of Asian Art Second Annual Jade Ball appeared first on Upscale Living Magazine.

For those travelers looking to get an immersive cultural experience in a new local during a vacation, there is no better stop then visiting a museum. Rich with artifacts, documents and detailed exhibits, museums provide a lens into the path and include items that are true marvels. Across the world there are numerous locations with […]

The post Best Museums in the World appeared first on Upscale Living Magazine.

Sylvain Gaillard, Swiss-born Director of Opera Gallery Dubai, is a creative visionary. Not only does he oversee Dubai’s installation of one of the twenty-first century’s most important cultural institutions, but his most recent exhibition, Urban Poetry, is an exercise in the masterful balance between the commercial and intellectual interests of high-net-worth modern and contemporary art […]

The post Wall to Wall: Where Street Art and Luxury Meet appeared first on Upscale Living Magazine.

Here's where to get cultured this month.

The post November’s Art And Culture Events In Singapore: From Ballet To Art Exhibitions appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

On Friday, October 19, the Dallas Opera presented Goerges Bizet’s iconic, masterpiece Carmen starring Stéphanie d’Oustrac in her American debut at the Winspear. Conducted by music director Emmanuel Villaume audiences were thrilled by a colorful and captivating interpretation of the 19th century classic. The French mezzo’s artistic personality and warm supple voice, combined with an […]

The post Stéphanie D’Oustrac Makes Her American Debut as Carmen at the Winspear Opera House in Dallas appeared first on Upscale Living Magazine.

South African artist Lionel Smit is world-renowned for his incredible, colorful facial sculptures and portraiture. He spoke to Upscale Living magazine about his love for his trade and the freedom to create whatever it is he wants to form. Tell us a bit about yourself. I am an artist based in Cape Town, working in […]

The post Lionel Smit, Figuratively Speaking appeared first on Upscale Living Magazine.

No one wants to be in a real-life horror movie, so why do we enjoy it so much from behind a screen? It's the adrenaline rush. Watching some scary is like facing your fears without actually facing them. Still, the jumps and screams are stimulated by our bodies fight or flight responses which we seem to enjoy, knowing perfectly well that we're safe from actual harm.

READ ALSO: Our favourite movies starring SK-II's newest ambassador, Chloë Grace Moretz

Another interesting theory talks about how you feel once the movie is over. Emotions are intensified when your heart rate, blood pressure and respiration increases, which means that any feelings of happiness, security or excitement are heightened. This gives you the impression that you enjoyed yourself, and that'll keep you wanting more. With all this in mind, here are a few modern Netflix horror movies you can scare yourself silly with tonight:

The post Modern Netflix Horror Movies And Shows To Binge Watch This Halloween appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.