Live: Art HK – Part One

The day began with a brunch at the Pawn, co-hosted with Chambers Fine Arts of New York/Beijing. AAP’s managing editor Olivier Krischer chatted with four young Chinese artists: Guo Hongwei from China, Yu Cheng-ta from Taiwan, with Magdalen Wong and Silas Fong from Hong Kong. The artists introduced their recent projects, as well as issues such as responding to the everyday and the importance of location in their work. 

On the first public day of Art HK, AAP hosted a three-hour session of short, informal “Guerrilla Talks” with a variety of artists, curators and collectors. Wearing purple shades, his signature vest and yellow socks, Subodh Gupta kicked things off, speaking with Olivier about the place of the monumental in the everyday. Curator Anselm Franke, who is in the process of putting together the 2012 Taipei Biennial, opening in late September, talked about the themes from his touring exhibition series “Animism,” which begs us to reconsider the relationship between nature and culture. Next was Liu Ding, an artist and curator who sees his creative practice extended into exhibition organizing, most recently the Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale, which he co-curated with his wife, the critic Carol Yinghua Lu, who joined him at the talk along with their adorable and attentive son. Lee Kit, moments after being selected for the Art Futures Award, happily pulled up seat next to Olivier, and spoke at surprising length about the hidden messages and sinister sides of the domestic tone of his work. 

After switching moderators, AAP editor-at-large HG Masters spoke with young Seoul-based collector Teho Kang about his newfound interest in the art being made in Africa, and afterwards, with Singaporean artist and soon-to-be-novelist Heman Chong, about the enthralling violence found in Chilean writer Roberto Bolano’s books. Longtime Paris resident, Chong Siew Ying discussed transitioning from making oil paintings of faces to charcoal drawings of landscapes, before Luc Tuymans took a seat, and revisited a period in his early career when he made films, and noted the lasting impact of that on his practice. Hitting some lighter notes, but just as existential, was Jonathan Keats—looking dapper in a corduroy suit and bowtie despite the Hong Kong humidity—who related how his “Electrochemical Currency Exchange Company” project at the HSBC building (comprising three calculators and some coins in vitrines of Coca-Cola, performing small-figure computations) the previous night, had been shut down and forced out by the building’s security team. Rounding out the day was the eloquent Bharti Kher, who ruminated on her fondness for objects imbued with the patina of human touch, as well as the story of how she convinced her gallerist to ship 12 tonnes of cast-iron radiators from Delhi to New York. 

Thank you to all the guests and those who caught the guerrillas in action. 

More tomorrow: live from booth Z9, Hall 3, Hong Kong Convention Centre. 

Friday, 18th May

1:00 pm Joseph Kosuth, Artisit – Rome/London

1:20 pm Gene Sherman, Collector and Executive Director of Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation – Sydney

1:40 pm Michael Joo, Artist – New York and Philippe Vergne, Director, DIA Art Foundation – New York

2:00 pm Sumakshi Singh, Artist – India

2:20 pm Jumaldi Alfi, Artist – Yogyakarta

2:40 pm Lars Nittve, Executive Director, M+ at West Kowloon Cultural District Authority – Hong Kong

3:00 pm Tetsuyuki Oishi, Collector – Tokyo

3:20 pm Iida Shihoko, Independent curator and curator of Aichi Triennale 2013 – Japan

3:40 pm Yan Pei Ming, Artist – Lyon/Shanghai

4:00 pm William Lim, Architect, Artist and Curator – Hong Kong