With Art Basel Hong Kong taking place this week, all eyes are on the fair’s robust return, as well as Hong Kong shows to know. We’ve compiled the most thought-provoking, aesthetically indulgent highlights on view now at Para Site, Hauser & Wirth, Hong Kong Arts Centre, White Cube, Blindspot, and WOAW below.
Yeung Siu Fong’s “Questscape” at Para Site
March 26-30, 2024
Yeung Siu Fong, Untitled IIIIIIII, 2024, mixed media on canvas. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Studio Lights On.
“Questscape” draws inspiration from Yeung Siu Fong’s ongoing interest in live performance, using the human body as a medium. The exhibition brings together large-scale paintings, installations, and performances in a collective project of interrogating corporeality and our connection to the subconscious. Mixed media paintings resemble MRI scans at first glance, with rendered details that evoke the spine and bodily cavities; a newly commissioned installation functions as the “heart” of the exhibition, its entangled structure appearing as a closed-off haven.
Since Art Basel Hong Kong’s inaugural edition in 2013, Para Site has maintained the tradition of highlighting the work of emerging Hong Kong artists at the annual fair.
Glenn Ligon at Hauser & Wirth
March 25-May 11, 2024
Glenn Ligon, “Static #8,” 2023, oil stick, coal dust, and gesso on canvas, 170.2 x 129.5 cm / 67 x 51 in. Photo: Ronald Amstutz. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
For his first solo exhibition in Greater China, celebrated American conceptual artist Glenn Ligon showcases a series of artworks featuring quotes from James Baldwin’s landmark essay “Stranger in the Village” (1953). In the text, Baldwin recounts his experience visiting the small mountain village of Leukerbad, Switzerland, where the villagers had never met a Black man before; he connects the experience to themes of racism, colonialism, and white supremacy.
Ligon has been making text-based paintings that feature excerpts from this essay since 1997, stenciling text onto the canvas with oil stick to create a relief made of sentences. The result is a dizzying mass of words that careen between legible and illegible, evoking both hypervisibility and invisibility in the Black experience. This exhibit includes a new installment of the series, “Stranger #98” (2023), a new abstract painting series titled Static, and a series of untitled drawings on Kozo paper.
Hong Kong Arts Centre Celebrates Local Artists
March 2024
Film still from “Rowdy Inside.” Courtesy of the artist and Hong Kong Arts Centre.
This month, Hong Kong Arts Centre presents five stunning local exhibitions. On March 30, viewers may attend the organization’s Open House, a full day of exhibitions, performances, film screenings, workshops, and experiential activities. From March 20 to 30, renowned fashion and lifestyle photographer Olivia Tsang’s highly anticipated debut solo exhibition will also be on display at Pao Galleries. “A WORD” documents the scandalous, revealing, intimate, tender stories of Hong Kong celebrities through a series of portraits, collectively yielding a rich photo narrative.
“To Morrow and Beyond,” on display from March 15 to 31, is a group exhibition that explores trends in local art; renowned Hong Kong artist Yuen Tai Yung has a collection of movie posters being showcased in the Centre, and “Digital Shape of Ceramics” features three-dimensional printed ceramic artworks created by sixteen talented alumni and teaching staff from the Hong Kong Art School.
Louise Giovanelli’s “Here on Earth” at White Cube
March 26-May 18, 2024
Louise Giovanelli, “Prairie,” 2022, oil on linen. Overall: 118 1/8 x 212 5/8 in. (300 x 540 cm). Triptych, each: 118 1/8 x 70 7/8 in. (300 x 180 cm). © the artist. Photo © White Cube (Ollie Hammick). Courtesy of the artist and White Cube.
White Cube presents British artist Louise Giovanelli’s second exhibition with the gallery, Here on Earth. As part of Art Basel Hong Kong, Giovanelli has curated a range of lush oil paintings that expand and reform found imagery, depicting women with their lips slightly ajar and their eyes closed as if in a static state of euphoria and anticipation. Giovanelli’s paintings are luminous and glassy, coming in sparkling shades of green and blue. In this exhibition, the artist debuts her Maenad series (2023-24), which comprises figurative paintings centered on 1980s film stills.
“Xiyadie: Butterfly Dream” at Blindspot
March 26-May 11, 2024
Xiyadie, “Wall,” 2001, Papercut with water-based dye and Chinese pigments on Xuan paper, 141 x 140 cm (work size). Image courtesy of artist and Blindspot Gallery.
Born in 1963, Xiyadie is a self-taught traditional Chinese papercut artist whose work narrates his journey coming out of rural China as a gay person. “Xiyadie: Butterfly Dream” is the artist’s debut solo exhibition with Blindspot, and also the largest exhibition of his works ever presented. Comprising over 30 works from the early 1980s to the present, the show is divided into three overarching themes: queer liberation, family tableaux, and iconography. The works chronicle Xiyadie’s personal stories, his homoerotic fantasies. Train (1986) depicts the artist’s first gay encounter in a train en route to Xi’an, while Gate (2013) shows two men pleasuring each other in front of the Square, the symbol of national power and civic life.
Ross Caliendo’s “Dusk Ritual” at WOAW
March 25-April 24, 2024
Ross Caliendo, “Untitled” (2023). Courtesy of the artist and WOAW.
“Dusk Ritual” marks acclaimed Los Angeles-based artist Ross Caliendo’s first solo exhibition in Asia, offering a collection of vividly textured naturalistic figuration paintings. Caliendo consistently returns to the forest as the subject of his paintings, and this exhibition is no different. Dusk Ritual freezes the forest in an ephemeral twilight, suggesting liminal feelings of introspection and transition. The paintings on display employ thick impasto and bright, bold colors, providing a surreal and hypersaturated version of the natural world as we see it. Dusk Ritual is presented by Gloucester Arts Club.
