2022 Annual Auction

Dear Friends,

It is a great joy to welcome you to our 2022 Annual Auction!

This has been a year of exciting changes as we pursue together new directions and enter another chapter of Para Site’s history. During this period, we at Para Site have undertaken a profound process of reflection as we imagine together a new vision and look to strengthen further our bond with the local art community and beyond. With a great sense of pride, we can draw upon a history of more than twenty-six years of pioneering experiments, dreams, and collaborations as inspiration for the future.

It takes a village to continue the momentum needed so that we can continue to have an impact on the next generation of emerging talent, visionary mid-career artists, and to support a program of cross-disciplinary exchanges needed to meet the challenges of our current times. Our team has been exemplary in adapting creatively to an ever-changing landscape. In fact, they have thrived in these conditions to produce highlights in this year, which include ‘Minding the G(r)a(s)p’, a group exhibition curated by Celia Ho; ‘Post-Human Narratives—In the Name of Scientific Witchery’, an offsite exhibition curated by Kobe Ko at the Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences; and with the upcoming ‘Fanatic Heart’, a group show curated by Cusson Cheng. We were also proud to continue our commitment towards supporting future leading practitioners in our field. This year we presented the seventh edition of Para Site’s annual Emerging Curators exhibition, ‘While we are embattled’, curated by Nomaduma Rosa Masilela and Thiago de Paula Souza. In addition, the 2046 Fermentation + Fellowships was able to continue providing opportunities for collective learning and guidance as well as financial support to the young artists, and their work was presented in the exhibition ‘Noble Rot’, organised by the Para Site curatorial team.

Amidst the constant flux of our city, the potential for art to provide solace and foster solidarity cannot be overstated. Unlike when Para Site first began, the city has witnessed an incredible influx of exhibitions emerging in new spaces. This should give us all confidence and renew our optimism for the creative resilience that Hong Kong has to offer— and it is an important responsibility to continue Para Site’s role in taking the lead in the discovery of new possibilities. Therefore, this is not merely a benefit auction, but a celebration and convening of art practitioners and art lovers alike, who believe in the intrinsic value of artistic endeavours to society.

We are truly humbled by and grateful for the support received from local and international artists, galleries, and individual donors who contributed towards an incredible collection of artworks for this year’s auction. Thank you to our expanding family of Global Council Members, Founding Friends, Friends, and Associates, as well as to our Board and Advisors, who have made our past year possible and the future bright. Special gratitude goes to our Auction Venue Partner the St. Regis, Hong Kong; Auction Preview Venue Partner Soho House Hong Kong; Wine Sponsor Gelardini & Romani; Auction platform provided by Givergy; Logistics Partner Brinks; Insurance provided by Circle Asia; auctioneer Jehan Chu; and artists Frog King, Chan Wai Lap, Yau Kwok Keung, and Yu Cheng-Ta for their contributions to making our gala evening so special this year. Last, but certainly not least, our heartfelt and special thanks to Shane Akeroyd, Mimi Chun & Chris Gradel, and Virginia Yee, for generously hosting the gala.

The work we do is not easy; however, it is, as usual, your generosity and engagement that encourage and enable us to carry on with our journey.

Billy Tang Executive Director and Curator Para Site

Samson Young 楊嘉輝

2021

Pastel, pencil, color pencil and stamps on paper 27.5 × 18.6 cm each

Unique

Suggested value: HK $ 60,000–90,000 Generously donated by the artist and Kiang Malingue Gallery

Multidisciplinary artist Samson Young works in sound, performance, video, and installation. In this relational drawings series of works on paper, the artist chronicled his relationship with and reactions towards significant events of the day. The majority of these events are current affairs, while others are memorable moments of personal interaction. Events are recounted through notations, mark-making, and written or stamped texts. Young received his PhD in music composition from Princeton University in 2013. He was a Hong Kong Sinfonietta’s Artist Associate from 2008 to 2009. In 2017, he represented Hong Kong at the 57TH Venice Biennale. His solo and group presentations include at Jameel Art Centre, Dubai (2021); Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2020); Gropius Bau, Berlin (2019); the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2018); the 21ST Biennale of Sydney (2018); M+ Pavilion, Hong Kong (2018); National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul (2017); documenta 14 (2017); Taipei Museum of Contemporary Art (2013); and Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (2005). In 2020, he was awarded the inaugural Uli Sigg Prize.

Legend of the Mountain

2021

Oil on canvas 30 × 60 cm

Unique

Suggested value: HK $ 50,000–70,000

Generously donated by the artist and MOU PROJECTS

In Yang Bodu’s Legend of the Mountain, the misty landscape evokes a sense of ambiguity, while the deliberately left undone edge of the canvas frames the painted area as if it were an open window.  The central figure looms suspiciously as the ‘legend of the mountain’ that the title alludes to; yet there is a solid rock inscribed in yellow hidden in the shadows of the trees. The ‘legend’ in the title is thus imbued with various connotations. Yang’s creations remove the viewers from the ‘contemporary art scene’ mentality, returning the modern art viewing experience to its essence—a private activity in a public space. Examining the relationship among the exhibit, the exhibition space, and the exhibition goer, her work exudes a cool sense of introspection. Yang received her MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) in 2012 and her BFA from the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts in 2008. She has participated in institutional exhibitions including at M WOODS, Beijing (2015); the PAFA Museum, Philadelphia (2013); and Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts Gallery (2008). Her work is in the collections of the PAFA Museum, and M WOODS. She was shortlisted in the Artsy Vanguard in 2021.

Stills from ‘Similar Disguise’

2021

Archival giclée print on conservation-grade matting

A set of 6, 30 × 45 cm (horizontal) or 45 × 30 cm (vertical) each AP 1 of 2 from an edition of 10 + 2 APs

Suggested value: HK $ 125,000–165,000 Generously donated by the artist and Kiang Malingue Gallery

This set of six still photos are from Tao Hui’s Similar Disguise (2020), a series of five videos that tells five episodic stories featuring five distinct protagonists from different time periods. Through this juxtaposition, Tao considers the role of disguise and performance in the formation and metamorphosis of identities. As the narratives gradually unfold, the stories that are not initially connected interweave and reveal hidden story arcs. Tao is known for actively referencing various forms of popular culture, conveying messages that could resonate universally. For Similar Disguise, he creates each of the episodes in the structure of a TikTok video, and beneath their casual appearance is a non-linear poetic narrative that imagines and recalls different worlds. He was the recipient of accolades including the grand prize of the 19TH Contemporary Art Festival Sesc Videobrasil, and was shortlisted for the inaugural Sigg Prize in 2019, and the HUGO BOSS ASIA ART Award for Emerging Asian Artists in 2017. Tao has presented solo exhibition at Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2015), and his works have been exhibited and screened worldwide, including at the Asia Society Museum, New York (2022); Hong-gah Museum, Taipei (2020); Para Site, Hong Kong (2019); National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul (2018); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2017); and the 11TH Shanghai Biennale (2016).

Historical nudes are often placed in the most fantastical circumstances. While attending life painting sessions, William Lim captured the random poses of the model and added the message ‘Para Site Auction 2022’ on the iPad held by the model, giving the classic nude a distinctly contemporary context that is bizarrely ordinary. Lim even incorporated a custom made gold-leafed frame that harkens back to salon shows and academy displays as part of the artwork. Lim received his MArch from Cornell University, and his interest in art and architecture informs his award-winning design practice at CL3, his architecture firm, known for its commissions such as H Queen’s and the West Kowloon Bamboo Theatre. In his visual art pursuits, Lim focuses on large scale installations and paintings. His work has been exhibited internationally, including at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Deoksugung, Seoul (2019); Hong Kong & Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/ Architecture (2017, 2012, 2009, and 2007); and Venice International Architecture Biennale (2010 and 2006). In 2021, Grotto Fine Art, Hong Kong presented his solo exhibition.

Nude with iPad

Wolfgang Tillmans

Nee IYaow eow eow II

2017 Inkjet print on paper 40.6 × 30.5 cm Edition 8 of 10, 1 AP

Suggested value: HK $ 75,000–100,000 Generously donated by the artist and David Zwirner Gallery

Signed verso: Nee IYaow eow eow II ph 07/2017 prWT 12/2017 8/10+1 Signed: Wolfgang Tillmans

Still lifes are an integral part of Wolfgang Tillmans’s oeuvre. Featuring a selection of marine plants and animals, the present photograph reflects Tillmans’s interest in looking beneath the surface and exposing what is not easily seen. Since the early 1990s, his works have epitomised subjectivity in photography, pairing intimacy and playfulness with social critique and the persistent questioning of existing values and hierarchies. Through his seamless integration of genres, subjects, techniques, and exhibition strategies, he has expanded conventional ways of approaching the medium, and his practice continues to address the fundamental question of what it means to create pictures in an increasingly image-saturated world. Tillmans’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at international institutions including The National Museum of Art, Osaka (2015); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2013);

P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (2006); Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (2008); and Tate Britain, London (2003). In September 2022, a major solo exhibition of Tillmans’s work, To look without fear, opened at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and will be traveling to the Art Gallery of Ontario and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2023. His work is in the collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, among others.

Shennong Frame of the Frog

Kwok Mang Ho, also known as Frog King, is a pioneering conceptual and performance artist who has been breaking boundaries in Hong Kong and beyond since the late 1960s. This sculpture combines ready-made industrial products with collages of Frog King’s signature calligraphy and drawings. The result is an installation that is at once ornamental and functional. Originally trained in ink painting and calligraphy, Frog King is one of the earliest Chinese contemporary artists to explore the use of ink painting as a conceptual tool, incorporating it as both action and material into multimedia installations and performances. With each of his pieces, he welcomes the viewer into his conceptual utopia. Past exhibitions and related events include those at the Museum of Modern Art Tokyo (2019); Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea (2019); National Gallery Singapore (2019); and Jeonbuk Museum of Fine Art (2015). In 1998, Para Site hosted his residency and performance ‘Art Life in 72 Hours: Multimedia Performance by Kwok Mang Ho’, and in 2012 he was part of the traveling exhibition ‘Taiping Tianguo: A History of Possible Encounters’ organised by Para Site that toured to SALT, Istanbul (2013); National University of Singapore Museum (2013); and e-flux, New York (2014). In 2011 Frog King represented Hong Kong at the 54TH Venice Biennale.

Maria Taniguchi

In the series room of phases, the title alludes to the oscillation between pattern and possibility, and design and its disintegration. A phase is as much a significant period as it is a moment in a process which is defined by its transformation, marking certain thresholds in time, attitude or disposition. This series of paintings elaborates on Maria Taniguchi’s past interrogations of time and labour in the artistic process. The checkered pattern calls to mind at once an oversized chess board or else a calendar. This visual idiom itself unravels time in its most prolific sense: hours passed or spent, days in a year, or turns in a game of chess. Taniguchi’s interdisciplinary practice encompasses painting, sculpture, video, and installation, and investigates space and time along with social and historical contexts. She won the Hugo Boss Asia Art Award in 2015 and was a LUX Associate Artist in 2009. She has recently exhibited at the 21ST Biennale of Sydney (2018); the 12TH Gwangju Biennale (2018); ZKM Centre for Art and Media, Karlsruhe (2016); Para Site, Hong Kong (2016); Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Manila (2015); and 8TH Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane (2015). Her work is in the collections of M+, Hong Kong; Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco; and Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane.

Just a Face

2017

Acrylic, pencil and correction fluid on plywood 40 × 50 cm

Unique

Suggested value: HK $ 140,000–160,000 Generously donated by the artist and MASSIMODECARLO

Just a Face is emblematic of Lee Kit’s body of work that encompasses a wide array of mediums that include painting, drawing, video, installations, and hand-painted cloths. His signature pastel palette translates and enhances the apparently cryptic but profound investigations and reflections on the habits and traces that shape the practice of everyday life, with the ever-changing emotions that it includes. His solo exhibitions have been organised by West, the Hague (2021); Art Sonje Centre, Seoul (2019); Hara Museum, Tokyo (2018); S.M.A.K., Ghent (2016); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2016); and Para Site, Hong Kong (2007). He has participated in group exhibitions including at the Benesse Art Site Naoshima (2019); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2017); National Gallery in Prague (2016); Sharjah Biennial (2015); New Museum, New York (2015 and 2012); Para Site, Hong Kong (2014 and 2013);  the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2012); and Tate Modern, London (2010). In 2015, he co-founded the non-profit art space Things That Can Happen in Sham Shui Po, Hong Kong, with Chantal Wong. Lee received his BA in fine art from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

b. 1969 in St Albans, VT, United States; lives and works in London, United Kingdom

Chantal Joffe

This drawing is of Chantal Joffe and her daughter Esme. The artist is influenced by the German artist Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907), whose paintings of women and children are an enduring influence on Joffe’s work and practice. Modersohn-Becker died shortly after giving birth to her first child at the age of 31 and is now recognised as being among the first female artists to paint nude self-portraits. Joffe has often talked about her interest in images of mothers and children in terms of transitions—not only of aging, but also of  life’s milestones, and this is a theme she explores in her painting The Squid and the Whale. Joffe brings a combination of insight and integrity, as well as psychological and emotional force, to the genre of figurative art. Rendered in deceptively casual brushstrokes, ranging in size from  a few inches square to ten feet high, her work combines fluidity with a pragmatic approach to representation. Almost always depicting women or girls, sometimes in groups but recently in iconic portraits with little attempt at photorealism, Joffe’s paintings remind viewers that distortions of scale and form can often make a subject seem more real. Joffe holds an MA from the Royal College of Art and received the Royal Academy Wollaston Prize in 2006. Joffe has exhibited widely including at the Lowry, Salford (2018); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2018); Royal Academy of Arts, London (2018, 2017); National Museum of Iceland, Reykjavík (2016); and National Portrait Gallery, London (2015) among others.

Study for The Squid and the Whale

2017

Charcoal on paper 59.2 × 41.9 cm

Unique Suggested value: HK $ 70,000–100,000 Generously donated by the artist and Lehmann Maupin Gallery

Wu Chi-Tsung

Wrinkled Texture 127

皴法習作之一百二十七

2022

Unique cyanotype on xuan paper 72 × 88 cm

Unique Suggested value: HK $ 90,000–140,000 Generously donated by the artist and Galerie du Monde

Wu Chi-Tsung began the Wrinkled Texture series with the intention to reinterpret the traditional texturing method called cun fa (皴法 ) in traditional Chinese landscape painting. Instead of using ink and brush, Wu employs the classical photographic technique cyanotype, to render the textures. Using light sensitive solution on xuan paper and manipulating the exposure of the paper to the sunlight, Wu reveals the blue wrinkles and folds created through chemical process intervened by nature that resemble the imaginary mountains and valleys from landscape masterpieces. The treated paper becomes a record of time, light, and human gestures. Wu’s multidisciplinary practice seamlessly weaves together Western and Chinese aesthetics on a technical and philosophical level. He received his BFA in 2004 from the Taipei National University of the Arts. After years of experimenting with ink paintings, Wu turned to photography, video, and installations, finding in these new media compelling conceptual stratagems that spurred new and dynamic approaches to making images. Wu has won numerous awards and in 2019 became the first recipient of Liu Kuo-Sung Ink Art Award. His works are in the collections of the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; M+, Hong Kong; and UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, among others.

b. 1961 in Beijing, China; lives and works in Beijing, China and New York, the United States

Autumn Bears

Buddha’s Hands

秋天的佛手

2018 Oil on canvas 120 × 120 cm

Unique Suggested value: HK $ 150,000–220,000 Generously donated by the artist and Star Gallery

Most of Zhao Gang’s still life subjects are drawn from his studio and kitchen, and he refrains from sticking to one style in his rendering. During the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), growing flowers at home was regarded as bourgeois and therefore denounced, sometimes even leading to persecution. Therefore, the plants that Zhao paints represent a certain yearning by someone who grew up with such repression. Zhao joined the Stars Art Group in 1979, which had close interactions with the No Name Group and the April Photo Society, among other unofficial artists societies. In 1983, he left China to study in the Netherlands, and in 1984 he arrived in New York, where he lived until 2006 when he returned to Beijing. In 2015 Zhao held his first institutional solo exhibition at UCCA. He has since presented solo exhibitions at Long Museum, Shanghai (2021);  and Pérez Art Museum, Miami (2019). His work was also part of the groundbreaking exhibitions, including the inaugural collection exhibition at M+ Art Museum, Hong Kong (20212); and ‘Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World’ at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2017).

Entrance

As with many works by Firenze Lai, this drawing captures fragile moments from encounters between individuals and the external world. While the environment around the figures—seemingly situated in an abstract void—is almost always unclear, their poses, gestures, and a strong sense of discomfort hint at their increasingly aggressive surroundings. Her work engages with the representation of subjectivity, seeking to depict interior life and psychological landscapes in utmost simplicity, while luring its viewers into the lifeworlds of individuals. Lai’s work has been the subject of solo and group exhibitions worldwide, including at Centre Pompidou, Paris (2020–2021); Para Site, Hong Kong (2019 and 2013); Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2019); Fosun Foundation, Shanghai (2018); the 57TH Venice Biennale (2017); New Museum Triennial, New York (2015); and the 10TH Shanghai Biennale (2014), among others.

b. 1962 in Gwangju, South Korea; lives and works in France and the United States

Minjung Kim

Minjung Kim’s primary mediums include Korean hanji paper, ink, and fire. Through repetitive and labor-intensive processes, the artist meticulously and alternately burns, layers, and applies ink to hanji paper following predetermined rules. In the Alveare (‘honeycomb’ in Italian) series, she uses incense to carefully burn tiny holes in the paper, and paints dots and lines with ink, resulting in traces of fire or water (ink) on the paper. By employing opposing forces in nature, her work examines the yin and yang order and demonstrates the paradox of chance and manipulation in her practice. Kim studied traditional Eastern painting in Korea before studying at Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan. She has presented solo exhibitions internationally, including at the Hill Art Foundation, New York (2020); Langen Foundation, Neuss (2019); the Gwangju Museum of Art, Gwangju (2018); Hermès Foundation, Singapore (2017); and Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Roma (2012). She participated in the Gwangju Biennale in 2004 and 2018. Her works are in the collections of Fondazione Palazzo Bricherasio, Turin; Asia Society Museum, New York; British Museum, London; Dallas Museum of Art; and the RISD Museum, Providence.

Alveare

2014

Mixed media on mulberry hanji paper 75 × 105.5 × 4.5 cm

Unique

Suggested value: HK $ 250,000–400,000 Generously donated by the artist and Gallery Hyundai

Tsang Tsou-choi

a.k.a. King of Kowloon)

Untitled

2004–2006

Graffiti calligraphy, marker on rice paper 75 × 49 cm

Unique

Suggested value: HK $ 140,000–200,000 Generously donated by Lucie Chang Fine Arts and the King of Kowloon Arts and Culture Foundation

This work on paper, completed during the last years of the artist’s life in a nursing home, is emblematic of his graffiti-style calligraphy, which usually involves the traditional Chinese ink and brush on various public structures around Hong Kong. Tsang Tsou-choi relocated to Hong Kong as an impoverished, barely literate adolescent. After discovering some family documents, Tsang claimed that the land of Kowloon belonged to his family, thereby adopting the title ‘King of Kowloon’. Over the years, he became a cultural icon, covering the streets of Hong Kong with his unique style of calligraphy with ink and brush, and occasionally, marker. Tsang’s messages, referencing his alleged ancestry and historical events important to Hong Kong, such as the Destruction of opium at Humen that led to the First Opium War, were initially interpreted as a display of insanity. Over time, his perseverance helped his practice gain recognition and his graffiti became a collective urban cultural memory for generations of Hong Kong people. Although few of his public works remain—most have variously been destroyed, rebuilt, eroded, or covered—his practice left an enduring legacy. He represented Hong Kong at the Venice Biennale in 2003 and his work was exhibited at Tai Kwun, Hong Kong, in 2021. His work is in the M+ Sigg Collection.

b. 1962 in Tokyo, Japan; lives and works in Tokyo, Japan, and New York, the United States

Takashi Murakami 村上隆

Kaikai Kiki News

2011

Silkscreen with gold leaf on paper

70.2 × 70.2 cm (unframed)

AP 2 of Edition 50 + 10 APs

Suggested value: HK $ 40,000–60,000 Generously donated by Gagosian

Takashi Murakami’s work captures an intersection of pop culture, history, and fine art that is ingrained with the postwar Japanese identity. This editioned print encapsulates his iconic use of rainbow-coloured graphics. Known as the founder of Superflat, he works across mediums including painting, sculpture, drawing, and animation, and synthesises fine art and popular culture, often using anime- and manga-style characters. This print features his characters, Kaikai (a white, rabbitlike character) and Kiki (a three-eyed pink figure), as well as his signature flower motif. Murakami received his BA, MFA, and PhD from Tokyo University of the Arts, where he studied nihonga (traditional Japanese painting). In 1996 he established the Hiropon Factory, a studio/workshop that in subsequent years grew into an art production and artist management company, now known as Kaikai Kiki Co. Ltd. Since the early 1990s Murakami has invented characters that combine aspects of popular cartoons from Japan, Europe, and the U.S. These figures act as icons and symbols—hosts for more complex themes of violence, technology, and fantasy. Select institutional exhibitions have been held at Tai Kwun Contemporary (2019); Museum of Fine Arts Boston (2017); Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2015); Qatar Museums Authority, Doha (2012); Palace of Versailles, (2010); Brooklyn Museum (2007);  and Guggenhiem, Bilbao (2007).

Body Movin

郁

2022

Spray paint on wood panel 100 × 100 × 3 cm Unique Suggested value: HK $ 40,000–60,000 Generously donated by the artist

Part of the artist’s latest series of works, this painting uses fruit packaging foam nets, ubiquitous objects from local Hong Kong markets, to create unique, almost see-through gestural strokes of dancing entities. These x-ray visuals, as the artist calls them, strips the subjects of any surface appearance or stories, transforming them into abstract and primal notions of movement and flow of energy, evoking cave paintings, which he admires. The image ultimately focuses on ideas of letting go, liberated self-expression, as well as the purity of having a good time together. Hong Kong native Lousy draws on all surfaces across all spaces, taking cues from the proactive and spontaneous energy of the streets. Lousy strips down his visual language to simplified, gestural, rhythmic lines with a bright palette. Responding to the saturation of information, the artist distills universally recognisable concepts into his stylised symbols like the prominent kiss face, the Buddha, and the all-seeing eye. The repetitive deployment of his lexicon points to a prolonged obsession that sits at the heart of the artist’s practice: a desire to liberate, project positivity, and celebrate life. Lousy has participated in exhibitions at Parallel Space, Hong Kong (2020); and Bangkok Block Party (2020).

b. 1955 in San Rafael, CA, the United States; lives and works in London, United Kingdom

Christian Marclay

In this four-colour silkscreen print, Christian Marclay continues his long-term focus on the relationship between image and sound. The work features the word ‘Rriippp’, an onomatopoeic image lifted from a comic book. Treating the word as though it were a score, Marclay carried out the action it suggests and dramatically tore the print in half. Viewers can no longer understand the full story, or the original cause of the sound. The work is to be framed at the original paper size, however, as though to emphasise the missing part. Only the word in the top half of the page remains from this act of defacement. Marclay employs the physical, even violent act of ripping as a creative mode of production, generating unique artefacts contrary to the seriality of printmaking. Over the past four decades, Marclay has fused fine art and audio cultures, working across sculpture, video, photography, collage, and performance to transform sound and music into a visible, physical form that challenges human preconceptions. He has exhibited widely including solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (2021); Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California (2019); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2012); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2010); Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul (2010); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2006); and Tate Modern, London (2004). A major museum presentation by Marclay is currently on view at the Centre Pompidou.

Rriippp

2015

Four-colour print on Hahnemuehle Etching White 300gsm paper 78 × 53.5 cm (Dimensions for the height of each edition are variable as each print was hand torn by the artist. The shortest side on right is 22.5cm for this edition.) Edition 17 of 60; Edition Variée Suggested value: HK $ 16,000–22,000 Generously donated by the artist and White Cube

Title TBD*

2022 Brass 52 × 16.5 × 16.5 cm Edition of 1 + 1 AP

Suggested value: HK $ 50,000–70,000 Generously donated by the artist and Property Holdings Development Group

*The artwork’s title is based on the collector’s personal interpretation of the sculpture and what they see in the forms and shapes. For example: Florence’s Bottle, or, if the buyer prefers to be anonymous, X’s Bottle.

A playful investigation into semiology and form, Christopher K. Ho’s sculptures take as a starting point architect John Hejduk’s nine-square grid, developed in 1954 at the University of Texas as a pedagogical tool. From there, he exaggerates, distorts, and rotates the squares, building sculptural forms that question and challenge context and place. Ho is an multidisciplinary artist, educator, and writer. In his practice, he examines histories and identity as articulations of power and politics. Recent solo exhibitions include those at Tomorrow Maybe, Hong Kong (2019); the Brooklyn Academy of Music (2019); and the Bronx Museum (2018). His multi-component projects have been exhibited at Para Site, Hong Kong (2017);  Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, NY (2013); the Busan Biennale (2008); MASSMoCA, North Adams, MA (2007); and the Queens Museum, NY (2000).

A seminal work by Hon Chi Fun, the painting exemplifies a pivotal movement in his oeuvre. Hon began to revisit the brushwork he had abandoned years before and created landscapes featuring intense colours. The rugged textures of the cliff are illuminated by the streak of blue and white light, in which his years of exploration of light and nature collide. Hon was one of Hong Kong’s most celebrated artists, best known for his abstract paintings and serigraphic prints that reflect his interest in Taoism and phenomenology through the expression of circles. Largely self-taught, he started painting in the 1950s, and later practised in mediums including photography, printmaking, collage, and calligraphy. In 1964 he founded the Circle Art Group with eight other local avant-gardists whose work all incorporated the synthesis of Eastern and Western philosophies. Hon was awarded the Medal of Honour by the Hong Kong Government in 2013. He was the first Hong Kong recipient of the John D. Rockefeller III Fellowship in 1968 that allowed him to travel to New York and study for a year. Notable solo exhibitions and retrospectives of his work have been held at the Asia Society Hong Kong Center (2019); University Museum and Art Gallery, University of Hong Kong (2016 and 1988); and Hong Kong Museum of Art (2005). His work is in the collections of Hong Kong Museum of Art; M+, Hong Kong; National City Bank, Chicago; and University Museum and Art Gallery, University of Hong Kong.

A Cliff That Was

2000

Acrylic on canvas 89 × 137 cm

Unique

Suggested value: HK $ 120,000–180,000

Generously donated by Ben Brown Fine Arts

b. 1969 in Zhangzhou, Fujian Province, China; lives and works in Beijing, China

The Form of Meditation

冥想的形式

2022 Ink on paper 140 × 70 cm

Unique Suggested Value: HK $ 350,000–400,000 Generously donated by the artist

This series by Qiu Zhijie adopts traditional Chinese ink painting brushwork to construct some geometric spaces, presenting a strong sense of form and visual illusion. The use of ink and the radiating brushstrokes require the painter to regulate his breath to control the movement of the hands; any distraction or slight movement would have become visible in the painting, thus revealing the meditative properties of painting. The artist decided not to inscribe any text on the work to make it into a map, imbuing these forms that can be read as abstract and figurative with earthly and spiritual energies. Qiu is the Deputy Dean of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, where he chairs and teaches in the School of Experimental Art. Qiu’s practice traverses calligraphy, ink painting, photography, video, installation, and theater. He represents a new attempt to connect Chinese literati tradition with contemporary art, social care, and the liberating power of art. In 2012, Qiu was shortlisted for the Hugo Boss Award. His work is in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Louis Vuitton Foundation, Paris; the Dior Foundation, Paris; the Ullens Foundation, Switzerland; and White Rabbit Collection, Sydney.

This painting depicts a fictional setting in Sun Xun’s first feature-length film Magic of Atlas (2019). Sun’s visual language consists of dark and intense handmade imagery laden with metaphors woven into dreamy narratives. He has used stop-motion animation to explore more possibilities in the presentation of his skillful hand-drawn and hand-carved sceneries, characters, and animals, variously done in Chinese ink and brush painting and woodblock printing. He chooses newspaper, books, and bark paper instead of artist-grade materials as vehicles for nonlinear expressions of time and space. The results are strewn with realistic and fantastical representations based on his understanding of society and sociological theories. Sun established π Animation Studio in 2006 after graduating from China Academy of Art. His animation works have received acclaim from both Berlin International Film Festival and Venice Film festival. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Vancouver Art Gallery (2021); and Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2018). He has participated in group exhibitions at the Asia Society Triennial, New York (2020); the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2016); and the Asian Art Biennial, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung (2015). His work is in the collections of M+, Hong Kong; Asia Society Museum, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo.

Wilfredo Prieto

b. 1978 in Sancti Spíritus, Cuba; lives and works in Havana, Cuba

Resúmenes y resultados

2021 Acrylic on canvas 59.4 × 84.1 × 4 cm

Unique Suggested Value: HK $ 50,000–70,000

Generously donated by the artist and kurimanzutto

As a daily exercise, Wilfredo Prieto reads the news from the national and international press, and interprets that information (or misinformation) through the conventional medium of painting. The abstraction of the news story becomes a simplified composition through which the viewer accesses as a second-hand reality. Painting is thus introduced as an object of privilege maintaining the conservative and pure structure. In this painting, the streaks of bright yellow and purple capture the jerseys of Los Angeles Lakers players in movement. Prieto’s work functions as tools for exploring social and political issues with a poetic sensibility. His work questions the underlying structures of contemporary culture and reflects on consumption, society, and thought systems themselves. Although Prieto initially trained as a painter, his work eschews classification within a specific medium. While some of his projects are technically ambitious, the majority of his actions and gestures occupy extremely subtle territory, inviting a certain distancing from everyday experience. He has participated in exhibitions at the XIII Havana Biennial (2019); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2017); the 57TH Venice Biennale (2017); Setouchi Triennale (2016); Moscow Museum of Modern Art (2015); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2015 and 2014); and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2014).

Sophie von Hellermann

Further developing her unique painting practice inspired by and incorporating literary classics, Sophie von Hellermann created a series of paintings based on Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin—the artist’s grandmother’s favourite piece of literature. In 2020, von Hellermann began to create paintings that illustrate the complex, romantic, and fantastical narratives of the book, portraying the various fascinating characters as they struggle with their fates. The series does not unfold according to the plot of the book; rather, it combines the artist’s memory and imagination, giving rise to new and original scenarios and narratives that are, at once, literary and cinematic. Von Hellermann’s romantic, pastel-washed paintings recall the look of fables, legends, and traditional stories that are imbued with the workings of her subconscious. She applies pigment without mediums directly onto unprimed canvas, and uses broad-brushed washes to present a sense of weightlessness to her pictures. She received her BFA from Kunstakademie, Düsseldorf, and MFA from Royal College of Art, London. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Hayward Gallery, London (2021); Elmhurst Art Museum, Berlin (2019); Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn (2016), and Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle, Belgium (2010).

I brought you my bullets, you brought me your love

2022

Print on mesh between plexiglass 124 × 187 × 3 cm

Unique Suggested Value: HK $ 60,000–80,000 Generously donated by the artist and Peres Projects Berlin, Milan, Seoul

The installation contains a photograph of Shuang Li’s performance Lord of the Flies (2021) where a group of people all wear identical clothes and hairstyles, as if in uniform. On closer inspection, their outfits feature T-shirts from American rock band My Chemical Romance, referencing the emo aesthetics of the early 2000s. The undistinguishable crowd zooms in on fandoms and the idea of identity and conformity within a group, and the spread of formulaic trends in Western pop culture. My Chemical Romance was very influential for Li as a teenager, and the title of the work pays homage to their debut album. The thin, translucent image appears both as a relic of an ephemeral performance and a fragile memory of the artist’s youth. Situated in globalised communication systems and inspired by various localities and uneven information flows, Li’s work, which encompasses performance, interactive websites, sculpture, and moving image installations, studies various mediums that compose the contemporary digital landscape. She has participated in numerous institutional exhibitions including at Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2022); Para Site, Hong Kong (2021); and Mao Jihong Arts Foundation in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2018). She is currently participating in the 59th Venice Biennale. Li received her MA in media studies from New York University in 2014.

Antony Gormley

EXTEND VI

For Antony Gormley, drawing is a form of thinking. It is also about the medium: using the intrinsic qualities of substances and liquids, a kind of oracular process that requires tuning in to the behaviour of mediums as much as to that of the unconscious, like reading images in tea leaves, trying to make a map of a path of feeling, a trajectory of thought. Gormley is widely acclaimed for his sculptures, installations, and public artworks that investigate the relationship of the human body to space. His work has expanded the potential opened up by sculpture since the 1960s through a critical engagement with both his own body and those of others in a way that confronts fundamental questions of where human beings stand in relation to nature and the cosmos. Gormley has had solo exhibitions internationally, including at National Gallery Singapore (2021); the Royal Academy of Arts, London (2019); Uffizi Gallery, Florence (2019); Long Museum, Shanghai (2017); Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil (2012); State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (2011); Hayward Gallery, London (2007); Nagoya Art Museum (1996); and Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk (1989). Permanent public works can be found at Gateshead and Crosby Beach, United Kingdom; and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge. He has also participated in major group shows such as the Venice Biennale (1986 and 1982) and documenta 8 (1987).

Gormley won the Turner Prize in 1994 and has been a member of the Royal Academy since 2003. He was made an Officer of the British Empire in 1997 and knighted in 2014.

Astres

Voisins 2018 Mixed media on canvas 90 × 90 × 5 cm Unique Suggested value: HK $ 350,000 –600,000 Generously donated by the artist

John Armleder is a singular figure in postwar art and one of the most representative Swiss artists of his generation. His career spans five decades and synthesizes many of the competing aesthetic developments associated with that period. He was a key pioneer of the Fluxus movement, while bridging the possibilities of art with the compositional experimentations of John Cage. This work is part of the artist’s The Puddle Paintings series, which are made with the canvas laid flat on the ground, allowing large quantities of paint to puddle on the surface. Afterwards a variety of objects—plastic toys, Styrofoam balls, and other bric-a-brac—are then tossed into areas where the pooled paint has yet to dry. Because Armleder employs paint based on different chemical compositions, they interact with one another in unpredictable ways, producing surprising relief and dimensionality. The combinations are endless and varied, as are the visual and tactile qualities they bring into being. These paintings carry abstract expressionism to its logical—or illogical— conclusion. At the same time, their effusiveness is an open invitation to any and every viewer who approaches them in the here and now. Armleder has since the end of the 1960’s created a polymorphic body of work which encompasses performance, drawings, sculptures, and paintings. Generally characterised by a sense of deep interconnectedness between life and art, and the appropriation of objects and quotes, his work is loaded with a set of influences and references which elude the modernist vernacular as well as any form of classification. Recent exhibitions include those at Haus Konstruktiv Museum, Zurich (2022); Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai (2021); Song Art Museum, Beijing (2019); Aspen Art Museum, Colorado (2017); and National Museum of Osaka (2019).

The drawing can be seen as Hao Liang’s attempt to replace existing storytelling with modern perspectives, and rethink existing inferences. Much of the Chinese painting practice is at once introspective and reflective on the external world, and Hao’s work takes this agenda and morphs it into his own individual visual language, while dialoguing with the history of Chinese ink painting, reconstructing surreal narratives from the survival of the present time. Hao studied at Sichuan Fine Arts Institute and received his BFA and MFA in Chinese painting. His recent solo exhibitions include those at Aurora Museum, Shanghai (2019); Mirrored Gardens, Guangzhou (2016); UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2016); Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht (2016). He has participated in international exhibitions and bienniales including at the 57TH Venice Biennale (2017); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2017); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2017); Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2016).

Scientific World (Sketch No. 2)

2009

43.5 × 31.2 × 3.5 cm

Pencil on sketch paper, colour pencil on tracing paper Unique

Suggested value: HK $ 120,000–180,000 Generously donated by the artist and Vitamin Creative Space

Kurt Chan Yuk Keung 陳育強

Who is singing in the midnight?

2017

Ink on Chinese xuan paper 50 × 72 cm Unique

Suggested value: HK $ 30,000–50,000 Generously donated by the artist

Kurt Chan’s creative practice juxtaposes Chinese and Western artistic principles, while exploring the restrictions of artistic rhetoric and mediums. Since 2016, he began engaging with painting as his primary medium, informed by methodologies of Chinese calligraphy. His ink work on Chinese xuan paper seen here features an original poem by the artist in calligraphy, as well as a seal engraving of the artist’s signature. Chan graduated from the Department of Fine Arts, the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1983 and began teaching there from 1989. He has been regarded as a pioneering figure of Hong Kong art since the 1990s. Chan has participated in numerous exhibitions, including the 51ST Venice Biennale (2005) and the 3RD Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane (1999). He is currently an adjunct professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and sits on the advisory boards of Asia Art Archive, and the Leisure and Cultural Services Department.

Gum Cheng Yee Man 鄭怡敏

Cheng Yee Man, commonly known as Gum, is a multidisciplinary artist, community organiser, and curator. His artworks explore various media, like painting, drawing, performance, stop-motion animation, photography, video, and installation, often poking fun at the irony in everyday life. He is also a registered social worker, part-time lecturer of Hong Kong Art School, founder of C&G Artpartment and Wooferten, chairman of the Hong Kong non-profit art group Project 226, and chairman of Art Together Limited. Since 2000, he has curated more than 100 art exhibitions, educational programmes, seminars, and exchange programmes. His curatorial projects mainly criticize politics, social issues, and art ecosystems. Recent exhibitions include those at Para Site, Hong Kong (2022); Singapore Biennale (2019); Shanghai Biennale (2018); Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong (2014); Cattle Depot Artist Village, Hong Kong (2013), among others.

Deduction method for a desirable sitting-out area: ugly goldfish advertising signs railing vehicles……

Deduction method for a desirable sitting out area  理想休憩空間之減法

2016

Luminous emulsion and ink on canvas 100 × 150 cm Unique

Suggested value: HK $ 30,000–50,000 Generously donated by the artist

Frank Tang Kai Yiu

Clouds in the dark

2022 Ink and pigment on silk 26.3 × 29 cm Unique Suggested Value: HK $ 28,000–42,000 Generously donated by the artist

b. 1988 in Hong Kong; lives and works in Hong Kong

This painting serves as the artist’s documentation of this chaotic year. The scattered white dots in the painting resemble snowflakes, but they also evoke gunfire in the dark. Frank Tang Kai Yiu uses a range of technologies and platforms in his projects, including ink painting, video, sound, and collaborative performance. He is currently pursuing an MFA at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He was invited to an artist-in-residence programme at The Zurich University of the Arts (2014) and Treasure Hill Artist Village, Taipei (2022). Tang has participated in exhibitions at Tai Kwun, Hong Kong (2021); Asia Society Hong Kong Center (2019); Les Halles de Schaerbeek (2016); and Kunstmuseum Gelsenkirchen (2015).

b. 1963 in Weinan, Shaanxi Province, China; lives and works in Shaanxi Province, China

Xiyadie

Heaven and Earth 天地

2000

Papercut with water-based dye and Chinese painting pigments on xuan paper 20 × 20 cm

Unique

Suggested Value: HK $ 20,000–30,000 Generously donated by the artist and Blindspot Gallery

Xiyadie is a self-taught traditional Chinese papercut artist who started creating works with homoerotic themes to tell his semi-autobiographical fantasies of transformation. Taking cue from the auspicious Chinese character of double-happiness (囍 ), many of his works are titled Joy, as the unfettered joy of being homosexual takes infinite sensuous forms. Xiyadie translates to Siberian Butterfly, a name he chose after his move to Beijing as a migrant worker in 2005, where he found an accepting community in the burgeoning gay subcultural scene. The Siberian Butterfly is a northern creature that can survive in the harshest conditions, maintaining its vanity and pursuit of freedom in an environment that does not lend political agency or representation to queer-identifying people. In this work, two figures come together in an act of copulation, embodying the unification of heaven and earth. The fluidity and sensuality of the theme is conveyed through the continuous lines of the papercut. Since his debut solo exhibition at the Beijing LGBT Center (2010), his work has been exhibited at Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai (2020); Bangkok Art & Culture Centre (2019); Gwangju Biennale (2018); Para Site, Hong Kong (2017); Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam (2015). Xiyadie’s work is in the collection of the Tate.

The Grand Forest

Liu Shiyuan works with photography, video, stage performance, and installations. Employing both found and made material, she uses unassuming fragments extracted from ready made images. Having grown up in China during a phase of unprecedented technological advances, global commercialization and popular culture assimilation, and later traveling and living between China, the U.S. and Europe, Liu adapted and cultivated an innate sensibility unique to the contemporary Chinese diaspora. The Grand Forest is from Liu Shiyuan’s series of drawings entitled Fictional Souvenirs, and it imitates the natural world at its most primitive with abstract grids and colours. By developing her own language of abstraction, she describes faraway woodlands that lie tantalising out of sight from the viewpoint of her apartment window. Her work has been exhibited at UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2019 and 2017); Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art (2018); Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2016); and Yuz Museum, Shanghai (2015). Liu received her BFA in digital media art from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing and MA in photography from the School of Visual Arts, New York.

Diviner

Qiu Xiaofei’s artistic practice departs from memory and unites history, politics, and personal experience with a dreamlike palette. He consistently excavates the spontaneity and instability inherent in the artistic process, seeking a balance of tensions amidst eclectic representations. After graduating from the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing, Qiu first worked in a representational autobiographical and socio-critical style until around 2012, and then shifted towards the abstract. His current multidisciplinary work combines drawings with sculptures and serves as a chronology of the artist’s personal history. As he explores his various memories or ‘thought diversions’ as the artist calls them, they allow him to delve deeper into his procedural, subconscious, and personal experiences. Qiu’s work has been featured in exhibitions internationally, including at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing (2018); Tampa Museum of Art (2014); UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2013); Tate Liverpool (2007); and Kunstmuseum Bern (2005). His work is in the M+ Sigg Collection, Hong Kong.

2022 Archival photograph 30 × 22.7cm

Unique Suggested value: HK $ 6,000–9,000 Generously donated by the artist

Chinatown studio

This portrait of faceless characters with a painted Chinatown backdrop is how Ming Wong re-interpret cinema and popular culture to consider how one’s identity is constructed, reproduced, and circulated. In his work, the artist often portrays multiple characters through imperfect translations and re-enactments, regardless of language, gender, ethnicity, nationality, or historical period. His videos, photographs, installations, and performances uncover the gaps and slippages that haunt the notions of ‘authenticity’ and ‘originality’ in self and society. Wong’s recent exhibitions and projects include those at Centre Pompidou, Paris (2020–2021); MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum, Chiang Mai (2021); Kunsthall Trondheim (2019); the 7th Asian Art Biennial, National Taiwan Fine Art Museum, Taichung (2019); Para Site, Hong Kong (2019, 2018, 2014, and 2013); Dak’Art Biennale, Dakar (2018); M+ Pavilion, Hong Kong (2017); the 20TH Biennale of Sydney (2016); and the 8TH Asia Pacific Triennial, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane (2015–2016). Wong represented Singapore in the 53RD Venice Biennale and was awarded Special Mention for his presentation in 2009.

1978 in Shanghai, China; lives and works in Brooklyn, United States

Pixy Liao

Beach Sister II

This photo was taken at Coney Island close to the artist’s Brooklyn home in 2014, depicting the artist herself and another individual named Moro. When living with Moro, the artist felt that their relationship can take many different forms at different times. Sometimes they were like boyfriend and girlfriend, where each of them takes on either gender role in turn. Sometimes they were like brothers, and other times they were like sisters. This is a photo that celebrates their sisterhood. Her photographs, videos, and installations, while highly personal, are often witty and humorous. Through this lens she calls into question current stereotypical concepts such as the nature of the couple, artist, and the female experience. Liao’s work has been exhibited at Aperture Foundation, New York (2018); Museum of Modern Art, Bologna (2016); and Asia Society Texas Center, Houston (2016), among others. Liao is a recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in photography and LensCulture Exposure Awards. She has been awarded artist residencies at the University of Arts London; Pioneer Works, New York; and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York. Liao received her MFA in photography from the University of Memphis in 2008.

2014 Digital C-print 38.1 × 50.8 cm Edition 1 of 5 Suggested Value: HK $ 20,000–50,000 Generously donated by the artist and Chambers Fine Art

Pastiche 殖物

2019

A men’s-size women’s dancing shoe with embroidery

7.5 × 10 × 27.5 cm Edition 1 of 3 + 1 AP

Suggested Value: HK $ 30,000–45,000 Generously donated by the artist

This pair of men’s size 40 women’s dancing shoes were tailor-made for a male performer who played the female role of Du Li’niang in Law Yuk-Mui’s three-channel video Pastiche (2019) that reimagines the Ming-dynasty Kunqu opera Peony Pavilion. The original video installation consists of collages of grafted images, music, and texts that restore history through both vocal and ventriloquised rituals, which in turn deconstructs and reconstructs Hong Kong’s identity. The work’s Chinese title uses 殖 (to grow; to reproduce; and the first character in the term ‘to colonise’), the homophone of 植 (to plant), in place of the latter to underline the fact that Bauhinia blakeana, a species native to Hong that was selected to represent the colony in 1965, is actually a colonial product. Through image, sound, and installation, and using the methodologies of field study and collecting, Law examines the daily life of the city, tracing history, psychological human journeys, and political power in relation to geography. Her work has been exhibited in Asia, including at Art Tower Mito (2020); Jogja Biennale (2019); and Para Site, Hong Kong (2018), among others. Law graduated from The Chinese University of Hong Kong with an MFA. She is a co-founder of the artist-run Rooftop Institute (2016–2022).

Sin Wai Kin

Synthesising different characters and selves, Sin Wai Kin created ‘It’s Always You’ (2021), a four-piece boy band parodying the stereotyped characterisation found in pop boy bands. Sin hyperbolised the ontological paradox of boy bands, where individuals exist in integrity with the collective. The phenomena of boy bands highlight how identities are strategically commodified for mass consumption, how queer codes subvert and trouble within the matrix of heterosexual language, and how boy bands contain the promise of love, fantasy, and collective escape. Sin (formerly known as Victoria Sin) is an artist using speculative fiction within performance, moving image, writing, and print to interrupt processes of desire, identification, and objectification. Drag becomes a practice of purposeful embodiment questioning the reification and ascription of ideal images within technologies of representation and systems of looking. Drawing from close personal encounters of looking and wanting, their work presents heavily constructed fantasy narratives on the often unsettling experience of the physical within the social body. Sin was nominated for the Turner Prize 2022. Sin’s performances and works were shown in international exhibitions and programmes, including at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2022 and 2020); British Museum, London (2022), Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto (2019); Hayward Gallery, London (2019 and 2018); the 58TH Venice Biennale (2019); Serpentine Galleries, London (2019), Taipei Contemporary Art Center (2018); and Tate Modern, London (2017).

Yau Kwok Keung

This is a drawing from the series Waiting for A Girl Like You (2021), whose title comes from the catchy song from the Blue Girl beer TV commercials broadcast worldwide in the last few decades. Yau Kwok Keung traces the origin of the blue girl, who is indeed the Greek goddess of excellence Arete. The meaning of ‘Arete’ has changed over time; its earliest form in Greek simply means moral virtue. It was later regarded by Aristotle as the highest form of human knowledge (the knowledge about knowledge itself). An ancient representation of Arete stands today at the Library of Celsus in Turkey, the only existing Roman library, indicating the correlation between excellence and knowledge has long been a construct. Yau sets out to apply drawing, moving image, crafts, and ritual to find out how notions of excellence can be shaped and dispensed, and who then upholds the criteria. His work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions, including at Jockey Club Creative Arts Centre, Hong Kong (2020); and Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences (2019). Yau received his BA with Honors in visual communication design from School of Design, Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 2012.

b. 1964 in Beijing, China; lives and works in Beijing, China

Liu Ye 劉野

Liu Ye is best known for his stylised paintings of children and exaggerated figures in imaginative, colourful compositions as seen here. Although his childhood was in many ways informed by the Cultural Revolution, his work and career are singular amongst those of his contemporaries, as his work does not directly engage with the political changes in China of the twentieth century. Instead, he consistently seeks a broad, universal understanding of humanity and expression, building worlds and inventing characters to explore the human condition that break or ignore chronological, spatial, or ideological frameworks. He has had solo exhibitions at Fondazione Prada, Milan (2020); and Mondriaanhuis, Amersfoort (2016). His work has also been featured in exhibitions including at Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (2018); Venice Biennale (2017 and 2011); UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2015); National Art Museum of China, Beijing (2012); and Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley (2008). Liu’s work is in the collections of M+, Hong Kong; Shanghai Art Museum; Today Art Museum, Beijing; and the Yuz Museum, Shanghai.

Little Girl with Mondrian

2011

Copperplate etching

90 × 120 cm

Edition 27 of 50

Suggested value: HK $ 60,000–90,000

Generously donated by the artist

Lovers Revolve,

Revolt

Two lovers embrace against a midnight blue background, their contours delineated in swirling strokes of mineral pigment and delicate graphite lines. Glowing as if illuminated from within, these figures are likely terrestrial forms of characters from Cici Wu & Xiaofei Mo’s serialised fiction project Lovers Revolt, Lovers Revolve, which uses the classical literary conceit of the transmigratory romance as a lens through which to explore Hong Kong’s political and cultural identity during the advent of modernity. Wu has had solo exhibitions at 47 Canal, New York (2021, 2018); and Bonnevalle, Noisy-le-Sec (2018). She has participated in group exhibitions at Seoul Mediacity Biennale (2021); Yokohama Triennial (2020); Asia Society Hong Kong Center (2020); Interstate Projects (2019); Para Site, Hong Kong (2021, 2018); and Triangle Art Association, Brooklyn (2017), among others. She has also participated in the Yokohama Triennial (2020) and the Seoul Mediacity Biennale (2021). She co-founded PRACTICE: a studio, residency, and exhibition space based in New York which has been operating since 2015. Wu received her BA from School of Creative Media, The City University of Hong Kong. In 2013, she moved to the United States, where she earned an MFA in sculpture from Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore.

1987 in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam;

and works in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Trained as a painter, Thao Nguyen Phan is a multimedia artist whose practice encompasses video, painting, and installation. Drawing from literature, philosophy, and daily life, Phan observes ambiguous issues in social conventions and history in reference to Vietnam. Phan’s work has been exhibited internationally, including at Tate St Ives (2022); the 59TH Venice Biennale (2022); Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai (2019); Lyon Biennale (2019); Sharjah Biennial (2019); Dhaka Art Summit (2018); Para Site, Hong Kong (2018); Factory Contemporary Art Centre, Ho Chi Minh City (2017); and Bétonsalon, Paris (2016), among others. She was shortlisted for the 2019 Hugo Boss Asia Art Award. In addition to her work as a multimedia artist, she is a co-founder of the collective Art Labor, which explores cross disciplinary practices and develops art projects that benefit the local community.

Thao Nguyen Phan 潘濤阮

Untitled (Two Baby Chairs)

2021 Baby chairs 48 × 36 × 36 cm

Unique

Suggested value: HK $ 30,000–45,000

Generously donated by the artist and Empty Gallery

Galvanised by a deep curiosity towards the material afterlife of everyday objects, Vunkwan Tam transforms two secondhand toddler’s chairs into a poignant readymade sculpture. Tam’s practice seeks to scrutinise capitalist cycles of production, distribution, and consumption, while observing the affective power of mass-produced objects to summon memories and emotions. In this work, the artist plays on the latent associations inherent in this category of objects, which occupies a paradoxical territory between mass-produced functionality, bodily intimacy, and subjective meaning-making. Unlike most other commodities, the value of children’s chairs is contingent on and circumscribed by the objective and inevitable process of physical growth. Once a ubiquitous product, the chair eventually takes on a personal role in a household, before the body for which it was designed outgrows it, leading to its predestined obsolescence, and differentiating it from possessions relinquished out of boredom or faultiness.

Tam both amplifies and complicates this reading of the chairs as objects through his manipulations. In doing so, he resists concepts of redundancy and defectiveness, whilst staging a ghostly confrontation of ontological agency. Tam’s artistic practice ranges across sculpture, video, text, sound, and installation.

He has participated in exhibitions and performances in Hong Kong including at Para Site (2022), Contemporary Musiking (2020), and Tai Kwun Contemporary (2020).

The subject matter of mother and child in Western art had mostly been for the religious until the modern era, when female Impressionist painters such as Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassat turned to the genre to depict the other aspect of the middle-class experience of modernity that were invisible in their male peers’ work. This work on paper captures some of the Impressionist spirit with its open strokes of pastel. It depicts a tender moment between a mother and her offspring—as the former embraces the latter in her arms—a recurring motif in many of Henry Shum’s paintings. Languid and intimate, both figures rest amidst a shroud of overgrown grass, which obscures the world existing beyond the borders of their shared attachment. Under Shum’s rendering, the painting invokes a sense of simultaneous nostalgia and phantasmagoria that is characteristic of his style. One of the emerging art stars of his generation, Shum constructs surreal dreamscapes imbued with subconscious references to art historical themes and religious undertones. Henry Shum received his BA in fine art from Chelsea College of Arts London in 2020.

Study for Mother and Child

2019 Pastel on paper 27.9 × 20 cm Unique Suggested value: HK $ 20,000–30,000 Generously donated by the artist and Empty Gallery

In some cultural traditions, rainbows represent the connection between the human and the numinous, suggesting a path from our limited perspective to a vision of a deeper reality. In Etsu Egami’s interpretation, her use of translucent colour is by any measure remarkable, combining an insistence on the liquid substance of her pigments, and the way they respond to the slashes and arcs of her brush, with a sense that she is painting with something closer to light. Her palette might best be described as a slightly grubby rainbow, as though that miraculous, sky-strafing natural phenomenon had fallen to Earth, and in the process become soiled, whilst still remaining thrillingly chromatic. Etsu Egami recently had her solo exhibition at Chiba City Museum of Art (2020). She has participated in group exhibitions including at the Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo (2020); and the Third CAFAM Biennale, CAFA Art Museum, Beijing (2016) . She was nominated as Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2020 and the finalist of Asian Art Prize from the Sovereign Art Foundation in 2019. She graduated with an MFA at Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, under the mentorship of artist Liu Xiaodong.

2022 Oil on canvas 45.5 × 38 cm

Unique Suggested value: HK $ 30,000–45,000 Generously donated by the artist and Tang Contemporary Art

This painting by Yeung Hok Tak alludes to a post-human era where we will have evolved beyond our physiology as we know it. The figure depicted has had his hands and brain interchange positions. Specifically, the visible brain represents for the artist an emerging new social norm where our thoughts are seemingly constantly scrutinised, in one way or another. Since the 2000s, Yeung has been prolifically depicting people and scenes unique to the land of Hong Kong in rich, at times psychedelic, colours, exploring in depth the complicated relationship between nostalgia, memory, and social change. Over the years, Yeung has developed a singular aesthetic, upon which the artist further develops an urgent, critical painting practice that is deeply concerned with the social and political milieu of the region. Yeung rediscovers fragments of memory buried deep in the collective consciousness, juxtaposing historical and contemporary subjects in romantic and surreal ways, to question the meaningfulness and legitimacy of historical developments and social progress. He has participated in exhibitions at Parallel Space, Hong Kong (2018); Angouleme International Comic Festival (2011); Festival Comics BASTIA of Corsica (2008); and Hong Kong Arts Centre (2006).

Yeung Hok Tak 楊學德

Leader

頭領 2021

Acrylic on canvas 45.7 × 35.5 cm Unique

Suggested value: HK $ 40,000–60,000 Generously donated by the artist and Kiang Malingue Gallery

Sweet Nothings

2014 Sealed plastic sheets

Dimensions variable Unique

Suggested value: HK $ 28,000–42,000

Generously donated by the artist and Rossi & Rossi

Composed of empty plastic candy wrappers set within an acrylic candy container, the work visualises the wordplay associated with disappointment and represents volatility and transience of mood. It also expresses the emotional process and the pendulum between expectations and disappointment. Multidisciplinary artist Nicole Wong adopts a process-driven approach to investigate philosophical questions associated with time, the tenuous connections between words and objects, and the limits of communication. Often quiet and unassuming, Wong’s works invite introspective thought through their appeal to universal sentiments and desires. Wong has participated in notable international exhibitions including at the Biennale of Sydney (2018); Power Station of Art, Shanghai (2018–19); and Para Site, Hong Kong (2018). Wong was a finalist for the Hong Kong Human Rights Art Prize in 2017. In 2013, she was selected for the artist support programme by Soundpocket, won the Hong Kong Contemporary Art Award and was a finalist in the Hong Kong Art Prize and the Griffin Art Prize in London. Wong received her BFA from Nottingham Trent University in 2012.

Est. 2006 in Bandung, Indonesia

Febie Babyrose (b. 1985, Jakarta, Indonesia), lives and works in Bandung and Jakarta, Indonesia

Herbert Hans Maruli Abednego (b. 1984, Jakarta, Indonesia), lives and works in Bandung and Jakarta, Indonesia

Ruddy Hatumena (b. 1984, Bahrain), lives and works in Jakarta, Indonesia

The Charade

Tromarama

2014

Single channel video, sound by Chris Hardani and Bagus Pandega 3 min 54 sec

Edition 4 of 5

Suggested Value: HK $ 30,000–45,000 Generously donated by the artists and ROH Projects

The Charade features different coloured and sized suitcases rolling through a car park, an office block, and a hotel in Jakarta. Animated objects are seen engaged in human activities like working, travelling, exploring, and consuming. They roll through the architecture of capitalism, the so-called non-places or ‘liminal spaces’, which are inextricably connected to the routines of modern life. The transient suitcases play charades with the viewers, replacing humans and at once representing the alienation amongst commuters and strangers in public spaces of transit. Tromarama is an art collective consisting of Febie Babyrose, Herbert Hans and Ruddy Hatumena, whose artistic interests include the notion of hyperreality and interrelationships between the virtual and the physical worlds. Their art combines video, installation, and customised computer programming. Tromarama has participated in exhibitions including at the Leeum Art Museum, Seoul (2022); Museum MACAN, Jakarta (2021); National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2020); Singapore Art Museum (2017); the 11TH Gwangju Biennale (2016); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2015); and the 16TH Jakarta Biennale (2015). Their work is collected by Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; and Asia Society Museum, New York, among others.

TIKAR/MEJA 50

2018–2019

Bajau Sama DiLaut Pandanus weave with commercial chemical dye and matt sealant 95 × 122 cm Edition 1 of 2

Suggested value: HK $ 20,000–30,000 Generously donated by the artist and Silverlens

b. 1971 in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia; lives and works in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia

Woven by

Sanah, Kak Kinnohung, Kak Budi, Kak Kuoh, Kak Turuh, Makcik Lokkop, Abang Barahim, Abang Tularan, Adik Darwisa, Adik Alisya, Kak Daiyan, Adik Dayang, Adik Tasya, Adik Dela, Adik Enidah, Adik Norsaida, Makcik Bobog, Kak Roziah, Abang Latip

With the woven mat, tikar, Yee I-Lann addresses how we share space. Weaving is an inheritance of coded rhythms and communal world views shared amongst women. The artist works with weavers who have lived at sea for centuries, with no paper identity but a rich knowledge and culture. Historically, there were no tables in Southeast Asia; the people sat and met on mats. The table represents the violence of patriarchal, colonial administration, which dictates identity via the census, land surveys, schools, and museums. TIKAR/MEJA juxtaposes the power of the table against the power of the mat. Yee’s practice, often situated at the shifting nexus of power, colonialism, and neo-colonialism in Southeast Asia, explores the impact of historic memory in social experience. In recent years she started working collaboratively with sea-based and land-based communities and indigenous mediums in Sabah, Malaysia. She has had solo exhibitions at Sabah International Convention Centre, Kota Kinabalu (2021); Centre for Heritage, Arts & Textile, Hong Kong (2021); and Ayala Museum, Manila (2016). Her work has also been shown in the Istanbul Biennial (2022); Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2021 and 1999); The National Art Center and Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2017); Jakarta Biennale (2015); and Asian Art Biennial, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung (2019).

Kak

Generation work Chair 3

2018

Coloured pencil on paper 29.6 × 21 cm Unique Suggested value: HK $ 30,000–50,000 Generously donated by the artist

The work of Cui Jie is layered with the realistic and the fantastical while exploring heterogeneous perspectives within different disciplines and geopolitical backgrounds. Her subject matters are deeply entwined with her personal histories, including the principles of Bauhaus architecture, the ideologies of Chinese propaganda art, the communist aesthetics of the Soviet Union, and the Metabolism architecture movement in postwar Japan. In this drawing, Cui harkens back to the Bauhaus-era philosophy that challenged architects and designers with the fundamental concepts of the chair, in which any two imbalanced forces can make up a body. The rigid right angles of the chair look as if an imbalanced body would be corrected. Nowadays, on the contrary, ergonomics as prosthesis is restructuring the body. From delaying exhaustion, to adjusting the posture of the arms and eyes, ergonomics has established a whole new set of codes. Cui magnifies the imbalanced body submitted to ergonomics that pervades our imagination, finding radical expressions in the chairs of science fiction films; and as the chair mutates under the tension between architecture and ergonomics, it becomes increasingly unsuitable for seating. Cui has participated in exhibitions at Para Site, Hong Kong (2021); X Museum, Beijing (2020); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2020); Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai (2019); Times Museum, Guangzhou (2018); MoMA PS1, Queens, NY (2017); and UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2017).

‘Counterfeit’ Banknotes from NMNT Vault

2022 Silkscreen printing on canvas 26 × 16 × 14 cm

Editions 1–80 of 1,200 with a specially made case Suggested value: HK $ 10,000–20,000 HKD Generously donated by the artist

Eastman Cheng has consistently been focusing on creating soft sculptures with a range of textures, colours, and stitches. She uses a range of sewing techniques to create interesting visual effects that add layers of meaning and express her viewpoints toward various social issues. This soft sculpture was first conceived and presented as part of Cheng’s performance and installation NMNT Vault (2022) in the Para Site exhibition ‘Minding the G(r)a(s)p’ in reference to the capitalist and consumerist culture in Hong Kong that the artist grew up with, and a humorous take on the fact that the monetary value of the printed bills are exponentially larger compared to the materials they are made of. Cheng has exhibited extensively in Hong Kong, including at Tai Kwun Contemporary (2019); 1a space (2018); and Art Promotion Office (2017). Her solo projects have been presented at Hong Kong Institute of Creative Culture Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity (2016); Chinese Arts Centre, Manchester (2010); Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Hong Kong (2006); and Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre (2000). Cheng graduated with an MFA and a BA from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2009 and 2000 respectively.

The work is a response to the exhibition ‘The Road to the Baroque’ (2022) at the Hong Kong Museum of Art. Luke Ching was captivated by the raw Biblical violence seen in Baroque paintings before the time of photography. Further inspired by the fable of King Donkey Ears, Ching created this work that is not so much sculpture as a prop for theatre or cinema. The artist imagined the king’s ear being cut off as news of his physical oddity travelled the kingdom. As Van Gogh once said, ‘There may be a great fire in our hearts, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it.’ Luke Ching was a top-notch coloured pencil artist in his pre-university years. He was among the best in class at school, and he wasn’t too bad at seal carving, either. After turning thirty, Ching not only learned to swim and cycle but also managed to get married (even before he was able to type in Chinese)—a feat he considers as his lifetime achievement. In his thirties, Ching took an interest in public space and the development of the gift economy. His current life ambition is to become his boss’s pet. Ching has participated in exhibitions and residencies worldwide, including Para Site, Hong Kong (2020); Gwangju Biennale (2018); Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2018); the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (2006), and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (2000).

King’s ear 皇帝的耳朵

2022

Mixed media

25 × 10 × 6 cm

Unique

Suggested value: HK $ 30,000–35,000 Generously donated by the artist

To Kai On Benny 陶啟安

TKOB-27YRS-CROSS#0

2021

Stoneware 32 × 23.5 × 3 cm

Unique Suggested value: HK $ 7,000–15,000 Generously donated by the artist

This piece of cross-shaped stoneware is modelled after an aircraft carrier in the anime series Star Blazers: Space Battleship Yamato 2199 (2013). In the series, it is operated by the antagonist and emits laser beams from the circle at its centre. Drawing his inspiration from prehistoric and early civilisation artefacts, To Kai On Benny selects pop culture materials from sci-fi animations and films and forge figurines and props from the stories into historical relics. Combining ready-made plastic toys and the ancient techniques of pottery to emulate the modern industrial mass manufacturing, he imitates the prehistoric practice to transform hopes and dreams into decorative motifs, conveying a modern worldview through his work. To records the collective spirituality of modern life to reimagine the relationship among history, religion, and popular culture. Creating hypothetical archaeology through fictional cultural relics, he attempts to look at contemporary society from the perspective of future generations and examine the continuity of our civilisation’s past, present, and future. To’s Solo exhibitions have been held at Art Basel Hong Kong (2022). He graduated from The RMIT with a BA in ceramics in 2021.

b. 1973 in San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina; lives and works in Berlin, Germany

Tomás Saraceno

Ha Chi Ki…

2021

300-gram cardstock, ink, soap, water 23 × 25.5 × 3.5 cm Unique

Suggested value: HK $ 18,000–28,000 Generously donated by the artist and neugerriemschneider

This print reveals the ordered patterns and irregular structures inherent in natural systems and the pursuit of eternalising the ephemeral. Deriving its name from the words for ‘breath’ in Hawaiian, Chinese, and Japanese respectively, the work alludes to the term’s simultaneous cultural variance and its common effort to identify an intangible, albeit life-sustaining force. Imprinted on the intimately scaled cardstock are the traces left behind by soap bubbles infused with archival ink—the results of gravity and air currents after they exert their influence on the nearly weightless airborne bubble formations. What is left behind is a lasting impression of a wholly unique, highly complex, interconnected network, ultimately bringing into question perceptions of space, order, and symbiosis. Saraceno’s solo presentations include those at The Shed, New York (2022); Palazzo Strozzi, Florence (2020); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2019); Museo de Arte Moderno Buenos Aires (2017); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2016); Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan (2012); and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2012). His work was also part of the 58TH Venice Biennale in 2019. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Dallas Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal.

Magic Soap 魔皂

2022

Customised hot process soap 3.3 × 34.5 × 10 cm AP 1 of 2 + 2 editions

Suggested Value: HK $ 6,000–9,000 Generously donated by the artist

Presented in the form of magic wands in the mahō shōjo (魔 法少女 ; magical girl) genre of anime and manga, Magic Soap blurs the boundary between what is and is not regarded as science, addressing the fragility of classifications. While magic is considered unstable or threatening, science is of logic and predictability. Mahō shōjo, with an appearance derived from the witch in popular culture, is a fluid signifier that rejects singular or simplified definitions. Is she a mere tamed and harmless image, a heterosexual male fantasy; or can she also be an empowered figure in weaponising docile femininity, who dethrones the male privilege of the heroic quest; or does she simply embody masculine qualities? If cleanliness is a recurring state that humans perceive as natural, normal, and safe, does the magic soap wand stabilise or destabilise the order in society? Hou Lam Tsui’s practice centres around personal experience, gender politics, boundaries, and peripheral storytelling. Her recent exhibitions were presented at the Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences (2022); RNH Space, Hong Kong (2022); and Para Site, Hong Kong (2021). She received a BA in fine art and history of art from the University of Leeds in 2018 and is currently pursuing an MFA at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

b. 1979 in Concord, Massachusetts, United States; lives and works in Los Angeles, United States

Candice Lin

Candice Lin is recognised for her incorporation of living organisms such as moulds, plants, fungi, and bacteria and organic matter such as tea, medicinal plants, natural dyes, and textiles into her practice of installation, ceramics, drawing, and video, She interrogates the colonial, racist, and sexist legacies of the current world that are inherent in her selected mediums. This sculpture was created for Lin’s recent installation Xternesta (2022) at the Venice Biennale. Building on several previous works, including The Mountain (2016), in which the ceramic fragments were made from mud taken from a swamp in Saint-Malo, where the first Asian permanent settlement in the United States was located. Lin has had recent solo exhibitions at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2021); and Banff Center for Arts and Creativity (2019). Her work has been included in group exhibitions including at Para Site, Hong Kong (2019); Taipei Fine Arts Museum (2018); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2017); and the SculptureCenter, New York (2017). She was awarded the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship in 2009. She is an Assistant Professor of Art at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Untitled

2021

Raku fired ceramics 11.5 × 14 × 7.5 cm

Unique

Suggested Value: HK $ 20,000–30,000 Generously donated by the artist and François Ghebaly Gallery

Two pieces are selected from the series To my collection which evokes the cheap wood collection in the artist’s possession that was shown at the Hong Kong University Museum. For the artist, how to collect and present art to the public in the age of social media where there is sensory overload from images of art and news on art sales becomes a challenge. Showcasing her private collection of objects of little value alongside the artworks inspired by these objects in a setting intended for priceless antiques shines a different light on Hong Kong’s famous antique industry and the contemporary art market. Jaffa Lam is a sculptor specialising in large-scale site-specific installations of mixed-media, which are primarily made with recycled materials. She is interested in issues related to local history, culture, and current affairs and contemplates themes such as the revival of traditional craftsmanship and the cycle of human beings and objects through her work. Lam has been invited to participate in exhibitions including the Lyon Lumières (2018); Aros Aarhus Art Museum (2015); Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (2015); and Setouchi Triennale (2013). She has completed artist residency programmes in Bangladesh, Canada, China, France, Japan, Kenya, Myanmar, Philippines, Taiwan, Switzerland, and United States. She received the Désirée and Hans Michael Jebsen Fellowship from Asian Cultural Council in 2006. She was also the recipient of the Secretary for Home Affairs Commendation Scheme 2017.

Xinyi Cheng

Monroe

2020 Etching 28.5 × 24 cm Edition 2 of 5

Suggested value: HK $ 18,000–28,000 Generously donated by the artist

In Xinyi Cheng’s artistic practice, reflecting upon the subject’s life and playing with internal layers in the background, she carefully constructs scenes of interactions and intimacies, such as in Monroe, a sepia etching of a small dog looking at a large bone in the foreground of an interior space. Those scenes mirror the characters’ inner world and further create a sensual experience for the viewers. Cheng was the subject of a major solo exhibition at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2020) and has also participated in recent group exhibitions at venues including the Renaissance Society, Chicago (2021); 13TH Shanghai Biennale (2021); Bourse de Commerce, Paris (2021); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2020); and Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem (2018). Cheng studied at the Academy of Arts & Design at Tsinghua University and the Maryland Institute College of Art.

From 2016 to 2017, she participated in the Rijksakademie Residency in the Netherlands, and in 2019 she was the recipient of Art Basel’s Baloise Art Prize.

2022 Giclée, screenprint, and rocks 59.4 × 39.6 cm Edition 1 Suggested Value: HK $ 10,000–25,000 Generously donated by the artist

The photograph is from the documentation of the project Spirit Above All by Zhao Yao. The golden pattern on the photograph is a rubbing of the rock accompanying the image. The etchings on the rock is the Tibetan translation of ‘spirit above all’. The work responds to the tension between external needs and internal feelings. His large-scale installation The Power of Nature: A Ten Thousand Square Meter Painting in Beijing (2012) was presented by UCCA Center for Contemporary Art at the Beijing Workers’ Stadium. His work has been exhibited at OCAT Shanghai (2017–2018); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2015); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2014); ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Berlin (2013); and PinchukArtCenter, Kyiv (2013). Zhao graduated from the Design Arts Department of Sichuan Fine Arts Institute.

Pipilotti Rist

This is a limited print edition to mark the artist’s solo exhibition at Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong, in 2022. Pipilotti Rist, a pioneer of spatial video art, has been a central figure within the international art scene since the mid-1980s. Astounding the art world with the energetic exorcistic statement of her now famous single-channel videos from the 1980s and 1990s, her work was co-developed with technical advancements of time-based media and in playful exploration of its new possibilities to propose footage resembling a collective consciousness of recent decades. Through large video projections and digital manipulation, she has developed immersive installations that draw life from slow caressing showers of vivid color tones. Her recent solo exhibitions have been held at Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2022); Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles (2021–2022); The National Museum of Modern Art Kyoto and Art Tower Mito (2021); Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk (2019); Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney (2017–2018); New Museum, New York (2016–2017); and Kunsthaus Zürich (2016).

Rather (Das Zimmer)

2022

Archival pigment inkjet printing 196 × 130 cm

AP 1 of 2 of an edition of 9 + 2 APs

Suggested value: HK $ 40,000–55,000 Generously donated by the artist

Borgogno Barolo Riserva Speciale 1947

2019

Giclée print on Hahnemuhle Fine Art Paper

61 × 61 cm

Edition 1 of 3 + 3 APs

Suggested value: HK $ 28,000–42,000 Generously donated by the artist and Molde Fine Art

The work depicts the artist’s experience tasting the wine referenced in the title. Each wine in the Visual Tasting Notes series carries a special significance for the artist. In this case, it relates to the time she spent in Piemonte, the wine’s birthplace. The work was made ten years later, when the seeds sown on the sojourn bore fruit: she became a Master of Wine, returned to her home city, and started a family. The image, while partly a record of the sensory experience of the wine, is also laden with references to the Piemontese landscape and symbolic imagery of crossing paths, crystallisation, transformation, and birth. Sarah Heller makes paintings, multimedia works on paper, and digital prints that translate her sensuous experiences of wine and food into the visual medium, exploring the links between gastronomy, culture, and language; sensory pleasure, the subconscious, and memory. She received a BA in fine art from Yale University and she has had solo exhibitions in Shanghai and Hong Kong. She created commissioned works for The Bourgogne Wine Board, The Barossa Grape, Winegrowers Association, Inter Rhône, and Biondi-Santi, among others. Her work is in the private collection of the Principe Pallavicini, Rome.

Josephine Meckseper

Untitled 2020 Acrylic on canvas 25.4 × 20.32 cm Unique Suggested value: HK $ 60,000–90,000 Generously donated by the artist and Simon Lee Gallery

Throughout her career, Josephine Meckseper’s large-scale vitrine installations and films have melded the aesthetic language of early modernism with her own imagery of historical undercurrents. Her works simultaneously expose and encase cultural signifiers and everyday objects to form an investigation into the collective unconscious of our time. This painting is related to a larger body of recent works which explores the concept of recycling, tracing, and capturing matter and memory as experienced by the artist during these unprecedented years. In 2022, Meckseper received the Annual Guggenheim Fellowship and was appointed a Princeton University Visiting Fellow. She has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, NY (2013); and Kunstmuseum Stuttgart (2007). Her work has been included in exhibitions at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2015); the Taipei Biennial (2014); the Sharjah Biennial (2011); and the Whitney Biennials ( 2010 and 2006). Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Migros Museum, Zurich; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Alvaro Barrington

b. 1983 in Caracas, Venezuela; lives and works in New York, United States

Anansi’s Dance (2)

2019

Charcoal on paper 76.5 × 57 cm Unique

Suggested value: HK $ 28,000–42,000 Generously donated by the artist and Sadie Coles HQ, London

The work was made during a solo exhibition of the artist at Sadie Coles HQ in 2019, the first in a series by Alvaro Barrington that celebrates Jamaican political activist Marcus Garvey. The myth of Anansi the spider, a god of knowledge in West African, African American, and Caribbean folklore, underlies this body of work. Anansi here becomes a stand-in for the artist’s mother and her various relationships: with the artist’s father, her son the artist, the artist’s stepfather, and the artist’s half brother. Born in Venezuela to Grenadian and Haitian migrant workers, Barrington was raised between the Caribbean and Brooklyn, New York, by a network of relatives. An unwavering commitment to community informs his wide-ranging practice. While Barrington considers himself primarily a painter, his artistic collaborations encompass exhibitions, performances, concerts, fashion, philanthropy and contributions to the Notting Hill Carnival in London. His approach to painting is similarly inclusive—embracing non-traditional materials and techniques such as burlap, concrete, cardboard and sewing— and infused with references to his personal and cultural history. A solo exhibition of the artist was held at MoMA PS1 in 2017. His work is collected by Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; Tate Modern, London; K11 Art Foundation, Hong Kong; and Loewe Foundation, Madrid.

2017–2023 Performance

Suggested value: HK $ 7,000–15,000 Generously donated by the artist

Florence Lam

A good bird begins chirping while in the egg

A good bird begins chirping while in the egg was first performed by artist Florence Lam in Poland in 2017, where she searched for a raw egg in a batch of boiled eggs with a hammer. In 2023, for the donated edition to the 2022 Para Site Gala, Lam will perform this piece for the winning bidder and up to nine friends of the winning bidder at a designated location in Hong Kong. The work explores the harvesting of life, creativity, and knowledge in the rapid world of mass production. Lam’s practice fuses current moral issues with childlike world views. In her performance, poetry, video, and sound works, she explores the fertility and sterility of the mind embedded in the properties of the biological body and language. She obtained her MFA from Iceland Academy of the Arts in 2017 and BFA from Central Saint Martins in 2014. Lam has performed at Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2022); Para Site, Hong Kong (2021); Kling & Bang, Reykjavík (2018); and Manifesta 11, Zürich (2016). She worked as a re-performer for The Cleaner retrospective of Marina Abramović at Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn (2018). She co-founded Per.Platform, a Hong Kong-based live art platform in 2021, and BASE, an art space dedicated to performance art in Tai Po Art Centre, Hong Kong in 2022.

Continuing the tradition of offering a once in a lifetime ‘experience package’, we are delighted to share with you the exclusive opportunity to spend the day with not just one, but two, present and former directors of Para Site! In an action-packed curatorial adventure, join Tobias Berger and Billy Tang on an exclusive tour to explore alternative spaces, artist studios, and their favourite destinations for art and design around the city. In homage to the famous ‘hot pot / hot talk’ event hosted by Para Site in 1996, the day will conclude with an intimate dinner hosted by the directors and joined by other mystery guests. Double the trouble and double the fun, the lucky bidder will acquire the chance to invite four friends to embark on this special day together.

Suggested value: HK $ 5,000

Hot Pot/Hot Talk during Para Site’s first ever exhibition ‘Site-seeing’ (1996)

A Tour by Alan Lau into the Para Site Metaverse

This is an exclusive opportunity to enter the Para Site Metaverse as its first visitor! Guided by Alan Lau, this experience spans the imaginary and the real to follow Para Site’s evolutionary journey. Founded as an artist-led space in 1996, Para Site has consistently pioneered exhibition-making practices by adapting to different locations across the city. In collaboration with PANGU by Kenal, the winning bidder will be gifted a customised avatar for this experience, which can be created in their likeliness or however they wish. Enter the Para Site Metaverse with this unique avatar, and Alan will lead you on a tour of virtual worlds inspired by exhibitions and locations from the past to the present.

Suggested value: HK $ 10,000

This experience is kindly supported by PANGU by Kenal.

Conditions of Sale

The properties offered in this sale are donated by the artists and galleries to be auctioned at the 2022 Para Site Gala Auction held from November 7, 2022 to November 23, 2022, Hong Kong time. Proceeds from the sale of the properties will be used to support Para Site’s programming and initiatives worldwide. Please read carefully the following terms and conditions which govern the fundraising auction. They may be amended by posted notices or oral announcements made during the auction. By bidding at the fundraising auction the bidder agrees to be bound by these terms.

1 (a) Para Site does not assume any risk, liability, or responsibility for the authenticity of the authorship of any property offered at this auction (that is, the identity of the creator or the period, culture, source, or origin, as the case may be, with which the creation of any property is identified).

(b) All property is sold “as is”, and the donors of the properties and Para Site do not make any representations or warranties of any kind or nature, expressed or implied, with respect to the property, and in no event shall it be responsible for the correctness of any catalogue or notices or descriptions of property, nor be deemed to have made any representations or warranty of physical condition, size, quality, rarity, importance, genuineness, attribution, authenticity, provenance, or historical relevance of the property. No statement in any catalogue, notice, or description, or made at the sale, in any bill of sale invoice or elsewhere, shall be deemed such a representation or warranty or any assumption of liability. Para Site does not make any representation or warranty, expressed or implied, as to whether the purchaser acquires any reproduction rights in the property. Prospective bidders should inspect the property before bidding to determine its condition, size, and whether or not it has been repaired or restored.

(c) Any property may be withdrawn by Para Site at any time before the actual sale without any liability thereof.

2 Absentee bids will only be accepted via Para Site absentee bid form by November 22, 2022, noon (12 p.m.) Hong Kong time. Para Site confirms absentee bids only by email and will confirm receipt of absentee bids by email. Para Site reserves the right to reject a bid from any bidder. The highest bidder acknowledged by Para Site shall be the purchaser. In the event of any dispute between bidders, Para Site shall have the sole and final discretion either to determine the successful bidder or to re-offer and resell the article in dispute. If any dispute arises after the sale, Para Site’s sale records shall be conclusive in all respects. The successful bidder assumes full responsibility for the lot and payment of the lot.

3 All lots without a reserve will be sold to the highest bidder, regardless of the pre-auction estimate printed in this program. No buyer’s premium will be charged for any of the lots. If the auctioneer determines that any opening bid is not commensurate with the value of the property offered, s/he may reject the same and withdraw the property from sale, and if, having acknowledged an opening bid, s/he decides that any advance thereafter is insufficient, s/he may reject the advance.

4 At the auction’s end, the highest bidder shall be deemed to have purchased the offered lot subject to all of the conditions set forth herein and thereupon (a) assumes the risk and responsibility thereof (including without limitation damage to frames or glass covering artworks), (b) will sign a confirmation of purchase thereof, and (c) will pay the full purchase price as well as a transaction fee therefor, including without limitation any taxes where applicable. All property will be sent to a public professional art warehouse for the account and risk of the purchaser. Para Site will allow the purchaser to arrange the transportation of the property from the warehouse within 30 calendar days, and the purchaser is expected to cover any expenses related to the transportation of the property from the warehouse to the purchaser’s desired destination. If the foregoing conditions and other applicable conditions are not complied with, in addition to other remedies available to Para Site by law, including, without limitation, the right to hold the purchaser liable for the bid price, Para Site at its option, may either (a) cancel the sale or (b) resell the property on three days’ notice to the purchaser and for the account and risk of the purchaser, either publicly or privately, and in such event the purchaser shall be liable for payment of any deficiency, all other charges due hereunder and incidental damages.

5 Payment made by a purchaser will be accepted via credit card, PayPal, bank transfer, or cheque. Payment will not be deemed to have been made in full until Para Site has collected good funds, including those charges made by credit card. Any cheques should be made payable to Para Site.

All proceeds from the 2022 Para Site Gala Auction will support Para Site programming and initiatives worldwide.

● Special conditions as applicable to Lot 12 Firenze Lai and Lot 27 Hao Liang:

1 Sale of the work must be subject to the conditions as stipulated by Firenze Lai, Hao Liang, and Vitamin Creative Space (hereinafter ‘the Donor’):

a) The winning bidder of the Work shall agree to i loan the Work to the Donor upon its request from time to time at the cost of the Donor and ii obtain the Donor’s written consent should the winning bidder wishes to loan the Work to any party other than the Donor.

b) The winning bidder shall be obliged to first offer the Work to the Donor should it intend to sell or otherwise dispose of the Work.

2 The winning bidder of the Work shall agree to be bound by terms of the license of copyright in relation to the Work granted in this agreement.

For any inquiries please contact Juliana Chan juliana@para-site.art

Acknowledgements

Artists Galleries

John Armleder

Alvaro Barrington

Kurt Chan Yuk Keung 陳育強

Eastman Cheng 鄭淑宜

Gum Cheng Yee Man 鄭怡敏

Xinyi Cheng 程心怡

Luke Ching 程展緯

Cui Jie 崔潔

Etsu Egami 江上越

Frog King 蛙王

Antony Gormley

Hao Liang 郝量

Sarah Heller

Christopher K. Ho 何恩懷

Hon Chi Fun 韓志勳

Chantal Joffe

Minjung Kim 金玟廷

Firenze Lai 黎清妍

Florence Lam

Jaffa Lam 林嵐

Law Yuk Mui 羅玉梅

Lee Kit 李傑

Shuang Li 李爽

Pixy Liao 廖逸君

William Lim 林偉而

Candice Lin 林從欣

Liu Shiyuan 劉詩園

Liu Ye 劉野

Lousy Christian Marclay

Josephine Meckseper

Takashi Murakami 村上隆

Thao Nguyen Phan 潘濤阮

Wilfredo Prieto

Qiu Xiaofei 仇曉飛

Qiu Zhijie 邱志杰

Pipilotti Rist Tomás Saraceno Henry Shum 沈璟

Sin Wai Kin 單慧乾

Sun Xun 孫遜

Vunkwan Tam 譚煥坤

Tang Kai Yiu Frank 鄧啟耀 Maria Taniguchi 谷口瑪麗亞

Tao Hui 陶輝

Wolfgang Tillmans To Kai On Benny 陶啟安

Tromarama

Tsang Tsou Choi (King of Kowloon) 曾灶財「九龍皇帝」

Hou Lam Tsui 徐皓霖

Sophie von Hellermann

Ming Wong 黃漢明 Nicole Wong 王思遨

Wu Chi-Tsung 吳季璁

Cici Wu 武雨濛

Xiyadie 西亞蝶

Yang Bodu 楊伯都

Yau Kwok Keung 丘國強

Yee I-Lann 于一蘭

Yeung Hok Tak 楊學德 Samson Young 楊嘉輝

Zhao Gang 趙剛

Zhao Yao 趙要

Ben Brown Fine Arts

Blindspot Gallery Chambers Fine Art

David Zwirner Gallery

Empty Gallery François Ghebaly Gallery Gagosian

Galerie du Monde Gallery Hyundai Hauser & Wirth Kiang Malingue Gallery kurimanzutto Lehmann Maupin Gallery Lucie Chang Fine Arts MASSIMODECARLO Molde Fine Art MOU PROJECTS neugerriemschneider Peres Projects Pilar Corrias Property Holdings Development Group ROH Projects Rossi & Rossi

Sadie Coles HQ ShanghART Gallery Silverlens

Simon Lee Gallery Star Gallery

Tang Contemporary Art Vitamin Creative Space White Cube WHITE SPACE

With special thanks to our Gala Hosts Shane Akeroyd, Mimi Chun and Chris Gradel, and Virginia Yee

Special thanks to

Claudia Albertini Malik Al-Mahrouky Dea Aprilia Sandy Au Aaina Bhargava Yana Bencheva Nadia Chan Tammy Chan Chan Wai Lap Lucie Chang Dan Chen Leanna Chen Cheng Io Hei Kelvin Ysabelle Cheung Jennifer Chiang Jee Hee Cho Janet Chow Ningyee Chow Michele Chu Lisa Dai Faina Derman Charles Fong Yvonne Fong Sharon Fung Marc Hesse Angela Gao Lisa Geddes Lena Guevry Helena Halim Vivian Har Kristy Ho Ho Sin Tung Scarlett Sijia Huang Lorraine Kiang Malingue Kristy Kong Elaine Kwok Debbie Lam Lanlan Kenna Lau Alysha Lee Sabrina Lee

Sunghee Lee Wesley Lee Helen Leung Ying Yue Li Ella Liao Calvin Liu Luo Yudan Édouard Malingue Christophe Mao Willem Molesworth Emerald Mou Kitty Ng Alice O’Reilly Tina Pang Brinda Roy Erl Santos Nick Simunovic Tara Sobti Madeleine Stoddart Ying Hsuan Tai John Tain Shasha Tittman Lihsin Tsai Eunice Tsang Pinky Tsang Nok Man Gan Uyeda Wei Wei Wang Nick Wilson Felix Wong Ice Wong Kei Suet Jing Wong Vivi Wong Wu Lok Hang Samo Wu Jian Yang Yang Tian Penny Yeung Yang Yeung Yu Cheng-Ta Zihan

Founding Friends Global Council

Shane Akeroyd

Mimi Brown & Alp Ercil

Jehan Chu

Mimi Chun & Chris Gradel

Samantha & Jamie Goodman

Benedicta M Badia Nordenstahl

Inna Rodchenko-Highfield & Tucker Highfield

Vanessa Ying Xu

Virginia Yee

Ethan Yip

Stephen Cheng

CMBB Cultural Organization David Zwirner Gallery

Alan Lau

Wendy Lee

Edouard & Lorraine Malingue Schoeni Projects SUNPRIDE FOUNDATION

Friends Associates

Nick & Cordula Adamus-Voegtle

Christine & James Boyle

Rachel Catanach & David Boyce

Jane DeBevoise

Yan Du

Jacobo Garcia Gil

Clarisse & Sean Garman

Kwai Fung Foundation

Jina Lee & Jae Won Chang

Lisson Gallery

Alan Lo

Kai-Yin Lo

Ingrid Lok & Tim Li

Elaine W. Ng

Justin Ng

Arjuna Rajasingham

Stefan Rihs

Fabio Rossi

ShanghART

Angelle Siyang-Le

Bonnie & Darrin Woo

Dayea Yeon

Kelly Yip

Axel Vervoordt Gallery

Erica Bibby

Stefano Del Vecchio

Kee Foong & Andres Vejarano

Jane Lombard Gallery

Mariko Kawashima

Bernhard & Cordula Kotanko

Joyce & Gus Lee

Ying Yue Li HG Masters

Doreen Merkel & Akshay Bajaj

Ocula

Silverlens

Paola Sinisterra & Ignacio Garcia Wkshps

Board of Directors Para Site Team

ALAN LAU KA MING 劉家明 Chair

MIMI CHUN MEI-LOR 秦美娜 Vice Chair

BONNIE CHAN WOO TAK CHI 胡陳德姿 Treasurer SARA WONG CHI HANG 黃志恒 Secretary NICK ADAMUS SHANE AKEROYD 安定山

ANTONY DAPIRAN 戴安通

DR. YEEWAN KOON 官綺雲博士

ALAN Y LO 羅揚傑

FED TAN YOUNG KAR FAI SAMSON 楊嘉輝

BILLY TANG 曾明俊 Executive Director/Curator

KELLY MA 馬元中 Deputy Director

CELIA HO 何思穎 Curator

CUSSON CHENG 鄭家醇 Project Manager/Assistant Curator

KOBE KO 高穎琳 Project Manager/Assistant Curator

MARLENE LIEU 呂瑪琳 Exhibition Manager

JASON CHEN 陳子岳 Communications Manager

JULIANA CHAN 陳辰珠 Development Manager

HOLLY LEUNG 梁皓涵 Gallery Manager

Advisors

TOBIAS BERGER

MIMI BROWN DAMIAN CHANDLER REINA CHAU 周譚蕙菁

DAVID CLARKE 祈大衛

DEBORAH EHRLICH 艾心玫

PATRICK FORET ANSELM FRANKE CLAIRE HSU 徐文玠

HU FANG 胡昉

TIM LI MAN-WAI 李民偉

KAI-YIN LO 羅啟妍

JESSICA MORGAN

MAGNUS RENFREW HONUS TANDIJONO

CHINA HONG KONG INDONESIA PHILIPPINES SINGAPORE TAIWAN