On VIP day of the inaugural edition of Art Basel in Hong Kong, the fair’s aisles were filled with some fittingly important collectors — including Guy Ullens, Roman Abramovic and Dasha Zhukova, Uli Sigg, and Budi Tek — as well as supermodel Kate Moss, L.A. MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch, and West Kowloon Cultural District director Michael Lynch. In addition to the bold-faced names, the fair’s first hours — whose best booths we’ve selected here — saw a slew of major sales for European and American galleries, as well as a strong showing by local dealers and galleries from Latin America.
Meanwhile Paris’s Galerie Thaddeus Ropac sold the Robert Longo drawing “Untitled (F-15 Eagle)” (2012) for $330,000, and Tom Sachs’s “American Flag” (2003) for $60,000.
Hauser & Wirth burst out the gate, selling works by Sterling Ruby — “SP234″ (2013), to a Chinese foundation for over $250,000 — Bharti Kher — “Coded” (2012), for $180,000, to a European collection — Thomas Houseago — “Two Fingers” (2012), for $165,000, also to a European collection — Zhang Enli — “The Color Balls” (2012), for $140,000 to an Asian collection — and Rashid Johnson — “Ulysses” (2012), sold to a European collection for $90,000.
Local outfit Hanart TZ sold four works by Qiu Zhijie for a total of HK$1 million. Another hometown dealer, Pearl Lam, sold Zhu Jinshi’s “Four Noblemen” (2012) for $195,000.
White Cube, one of the few London galleries with a Hong Kong outpost, had a very busy day, finding buyers for Theaster Gates’s “Horizon With Shadows” (2013, $135,000), which went to an Asian collector, as did Gary Hume’s “Suicide Showman” (2013, $100,000).
Los Angeles’s Blum & Poe sold Takashi Murakami’s “Pom & Me: On the Red Mound of the Dead” (2013) for $400,000 and Yoshitomo Nara’s “Close your eyes, think about…” (2013) for $160,000.
Lehmann Maupin, the New York gallery that recently opened an outpost in Hong Kong, had no trouble finding a buyer for Tracey Emin’s “Now Love is for You!” (2013) for $75,500.
Casa Triangulo of Sao Paulo sold Mariana Palma’s “Sem Titulo” (2013) for $60,000 to a Hong Kong-based European collector. Meanwhile, Mexico City’s Galeria OMR found buyers for Ruben Ortiz Torres’s “Showing the copper” (2013) at $90,000 and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s “Bifurcation Shadow Object 2″ (2012), which sold for $35,000.
Click here to watch our videos from Art Basel in Hong Kong.
— Benjamin Sutton
(Photo via Art Basel Hong Kong/Facebook.)