Last year saw a 14 percent year-on-year decline in sales across mainland China and Hong Kong, according to the most recent Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report. Though sales in the region were still 13 percent above 2020 at $11.2 billion, it was the second lowest total since 2009 and the report found that auction sales dipped in Japan, South Korea, and other smaller markets internationally in 2022.

Given that, it was altogether surprising when market indicators this year revealed a wholly different shift for the wildly diverse Asia region.

In November, the 2023 Survey of Global Collection by Art Basel and UBS reported that, in the first half of this year, collectors from mainland China had the highest median expenditure of all collectors, at $241,000. That figure was a sharp increase over the previous two years. Meanwhile, in Southeast Asia, Indonesia’s homegrown art fair Art Jakarta rolled out a well-attended edition at its new venue and time slot from November 17 to 19, while Art Fair Philippines returned for its tenth edition in February with 63 exhibitors, an increase from 46 last year. The country’s leading gallery, SILVERLENS, expanded with an outpost in New York last July.

It is safe to say that the regional art market has been buoyed by a sense of confidence, hunger for disruption, and deep pockets. It was exactly this atmosphere in 2021 that allowed NFTs and related technologies to become so popular in various parts of Asia beginning, with young tech entrepreneurs making their first forays into the art market, changing the very ethos of buying art in the region, for better or worse.

While techno-optimism remains especially prevalent in major capitals like Seoul, Hong Kong, and Singapore, such a mindset tends to engender wilful ignorance towards the various pressures floating in the background, such as growing censorship and social inequities, geopolitical conflicts, and the looming climate crisis. These issues were clearly showing amidst ambitious efforts to expand or innovate this year.

To that end, here are five major trends that stood out in Asia’s art market and institutional landscape in 2023.  

An ancient city that once serving as the country’s capital throughout 10 dynasties, nearby Nanjing, widely known for its picturesque fall foliage, offers a far more languid, contemplative pace, as compared to the classic Blade Runner–type capital cities of Asia. Most notably, the city has over 60 museums spanning history, art, culture, archaeology, and textiles, amid looming mountains and skyscrapers.

Among these are Nanjing’s first contemporary art museum, Sifang Art Museum, founded in 2005 and home to the eclectic international contemporary art collection of Lu Xun; the Golden Eagle Museum of Art, the famous “hanging private art museum” founded in 2020; and the not-to-be-missed Nanjing Museum with its intensely popular and expertly curated ongoing special exhibition exploring the 3,000-year history of jade.

A new addition to this slew of diverse cultural offerings is the Deji Art Museum, strategically located on the eighth floor of Deji Plaza Phase II in Xinjiekou, which bills itself as “China’s No.1 Business Circle” and has been designed as a sort of cultural axis or “museum mile” for the city.

The museum primarily showcases works collected by Wu Tiejun, founder of the Deji Group and a new addition to the ARTnews Top 200 Collectors list, which owns and operates the Deji Plaza development. The museum collection, spanning thousands of years, is divided into ancient Chinese art, the art of Jinling (the ancient name for Nanjing), and modern and contemporary art from China and beyond.

Tapping on the expansive historicity of Wu’s collection, the Deji Art Museum recently opened “Nothing Still About Still Lifes: Three Centuries of Floral Compositions,” which runs until March 2024. The blockbuster exhibition explores the evolution of modern and contemporary art in East and West from the second half of the 19th century to present day, through the presentation of over 100 works focusing on floral compositions.

Speaking with ARTnews at her office above Deji Art Museum, director Ai Lin described the viewing experience of the exhibition as “listening to a dialogue between East and West.”

She continued, “In traditional Chinese art, we mostly will see landscapes, birds, mountains, and flowers. In Western paintings, there is also a focus on a lot of still landscapes. So, there is some kind of connection between both sides exploring the relationship between people and their (physical) surroundings. Floral composition specifically is the kind of topic we could see a lot of connections, connections between nature and human beings and art itself.”

For art historian Joachim Pissarro, the exhibition’s guest curator, it was important that the exhibition and its accompanying catalogue do away with the idea that floral still lifes are only found in European painting traditions. “What we have done is establish a series of dialogues between East and West,” he said. “We were interested in recreating those dialogues, which had never been shown. That’s the uniqueness of the exhibition—you have many exhibitions of floral still lifes before, but you’ve never had one constantly able to go back and forth between East and West.”

The sections of “Nothing Still About Still Lifes” that best epitomize this sense of conversation open the exhibition and are aptly titled “Cross-Pollination” and “Avant-Gardening.” Claude Monet’s 1878 Fleurs dans un pot (Roses et brouillard), Pablo Picasso’s Vase de fleurs (1901), and Piet Mondrian’s Chrysanthemum (1909) are presented alongside works like Pan Yuliang’s Bouquet de Chrysanthèmes Roses (1944) and more recent pieces like Wu Guanzhong’s Lilac (1991) and Sa Dji’s The Prosperity of Life (1991–93).

Yet, the works that steal the show are by artists from China and other parts of Asia. These pieces confidently resonate with history, artistic ambition, and even palpable emotion, much more so than the works on view by their Western counterparts. For example, Liliac, which hammered at $2.5 million dollar at a China Guardian auction in Hong Kong in 2021, is a poignant oil painting that is said to be a visual love poem by Wu Guanzhong for his afflicted wife.

Despite showcasing works such as Jeff Koons’s sculpture Wall Relief with Bird (1991) and Andy Warhol’s Flowers (1964), the exhibition notably suffers from a lack of potency in its contemporary sections by Western artists, but this could be due to the nature and development of the Deji Art Museum collection itself.

When discussing the direction for the museum and collection over the next five years, Lin said there is still much more work to do in terms of their contemporary collection: “We actually took 30 years to build the ancient collection, and we took 10 years to build the contemporary collection, so we still have a lot of different contemporary works to collect and exhibit.” 

One of the key objectives of “Nothing Still About Still Lifes” is to bring to light issues facing humanity, specifically the ecological crisis, by highlighting aspects of our physical landscape via artworks spanning centuries. This is also an overarching focus for Deji Art Museum as it intends to further explore the relationship between human society and nature via the showcase of its collection to the general public.

To that end, the museum’s next exhibition intends to present works by famed digital artist Beeple, including his 2023 sculpture S.2122, which the museum bought for $9 million at Art Basel Hong Kong earlier this year. The work showcases a building complex seemingly from the future, with hovering drones and mushrooms, floating in a sea of water.

“The museum collection contains our own history and culture, but we have to look into future development of society as human beings ourselves, so we have to also look into such issues and present it with our collections,” said Lin, “That’s why we choose to make this art museum as a floor [in Deji Plaza], not a single lonely building.”

She continued, “A lot of people in China already know that when they visit a new city, they need to go to the museum, to maybe to see some history, or maybe to see the future. So, for right now we choose to create an art museum which is easy to access and try to give people a new way to think—to give them space to broaden their thinking.”

Held in Japan’s most picturesque, historically rich, and conservative city, ACK has enjoyed a positive reception from attendees across the region since its debut in 2021, primarily because of its promise of a less frenetic platform.

“The Japanese art scene—with rich history that dates back thousands of years—has always been dynamic and thriving, but we are conscious that it has been (re)gaining more international attention in recent years, thanks to the new generation of artists, collectors, and arts professionals that bring fresh and global perspectives to the scene,” Yukako Yamashita, ACK’s Program Director, told ARTnews.

“We are mindful that it’s important to continue this momentum to further elevate the art scene globally, but we must do so in a thoughtful way that does not compromise the quality and sincerity of what we have to offer. This mindset is very much reflected in how we operate ACK,” she added.

In this vein, ACK’s trademark feature involves each Japanese host gallery sharing a booth with an international collaborator of their choice. The last edition presented works by 64 galleries sharing 35 booths, comprising tall wooden walls similar to open crates at a warehouse, rendering an already small showcase even more refreshingly intimate and focused.

This year, ACK welcomed 33 new exhibitors, including leading international galleries like 47 Canal, Almine Rech, Flower Gallery, Karma, and Mendes Wood DM. “We have great ambitions to grow our audiences internationally and contribute to Kyoto’s art community, but we don’t want to rush anything,” said Yamashita. 

The Gallery Collaborations section paired 27 international galleries with 26 galleries from Japan, while ACK’s other gallery section, Kyoto Meetings, featured 11 presentations of works by artists related to the city.

According to fair organizers, ACK doubled their physical footprint with its latest edition, while maintaining the number of exhibitors, with the intention to make the halls less crowded for both visitors and exhibitors. The expanded space also accommodated programs with partners, like Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group whose “MUFG Kogei Project” showcased artisans who used traditional techniques to make modern-day objects with high levels of craftsmanship. 

While a few collectors from Europe and the US said they found the overall layout less overstimulating than that of other fairs, this year’s increased physical space did not necessarily translate into the fair’s undeniably unique selling point, according to several international visitors and industry insiders who ARTnews spoke with on the ground.

“The previous iteration of the fair appeared to exhibit a more consistent curatorial approach. The smaller scale and a more cohesive curation of the fair space were aspects that garnered success,” said Natalia Dawid, a Tokyo-based director for Pearl Lam Galleries, which did not participate in the fair.

Last year’s Public Program section, curated by Jam Acuzar, a Tokyo-based curator from the Philippines, also took the fair’s layout into account, with the walking space between the booths used to create a more mediative and impactful art fair experience; 60 layers of sound artist Miyu Hosoi’s voice played in an otherworldly manner on speakers running on either side. This year’s Public Program, curated by Waseda University professor Greg Dvorak, took a different approach. Under the title “Beyond Glitch: Remapping Reality in a Broken World,” a slew of installations, in various negative spaces across the exhibition hall, created a more cluttered experience.

“The presence of engaging surprises last year—such as outdoor installations that invited us to explore, and to revel in the beauty of nearby surroundings and landscapes—was missed this time,” added Dawid, who noted several highlights outside the fair, including a Harold Ancart solo exhibition at the Contemporary Art Foundation and a Zazen session led by Vice Abbot Ito Toryo at the Ryosoku-in Temple, which she said “elevated the spiritual quotient.”

Nonetheless, a particular standout group display that impressed visitors with its “special circular theme” could be found at the booth of Taiwan’s major contemporary art gallery TKG+ and its host Japanese gallery ShugoArts.

“The circular form at first glance, serves as a window linking artists from both galleries together, which successfully attracted many attentions,” said TKG+ director Shelly Wu, who recently joined the ACK selection committee. “Michael Lin’s round table installation not only symbolizes people coming together but also cleverly incorporates Taiwanese floral patterns, creating a dialogue between cultural memory and contemporary art. Jane Lee offers insights of her Kyoto impression and Japanese culture, creating a unique work surrounding the theme of nature and human interaction.”

However, based on sales highlights shared by fair organizers and the rare few galleries, it does seem that Japanese artists and galleries sold more works than their international counterparts.

In the Gallery Collaborations section, the internationally renowned Mizuma Art Gallery (based in Tokyo and with a location in Singapore) and Australian gallery Sullivan+Strumpf sold several works by Miyanaga Aiko, each priced in the range of ¥385,000 to ¥550,000 (around $2,500 to $3,600). Tokyo’s Kotaro Nukaga and blue-chip gallery Almine Rech sold a 9.5-foot-by-6.75-foot painting by Tomokazu Matsuyamato to an Asian collector, while Misako & Rosen (Tokyo) and 47 Canal (New York) sold four paintings by Trevor Shimizu for a total of $200,000.

By the end of the first preview day, Charles Fong, a Hong Kong–based director of Rossi & Rossi, shared that he had not sold any works by Thai artist Mit Jai Inn presented at the ACK booth, but his partnering Japanese gallerist Yoshiaki-san had sold a few photographs.

Galleries presenting local artists in the Kyoto Meetings section, however, saw brisk sales. Art Court Gallery sold several works by Yoshioka Chihiro, each work in the price range of ¥60,000 to ¥70,000 ($395 to $461). Taguchi Fine Art sold 13 works by Shigeru Nishikawa for approximately ¥6.6 million ($43,500) in total. Taguchi Fine Art also saw 14 works by Shigeru Nishikawa sell for an approximate total amount of ¥5.5 million ($36,000). Tezukayama Gallery sold a painting by Atsuchi Tomoko for ¥550,000 ($3,600) and several works by Hirano Yasuko in the range of ¥132,000 to ¥550,000 ($870 to $3,600) each.

In contrast, Karma sold 10 works from its booth to several Japanese, Chinese, and American collectors. Neugerriemschneider sold a work by Olafur Eliasson to a Japanese collector. Back at the Gallery Collaborations section, Taro Nasu and Galerie Eva Presenhuber sold Untitled (Sarvisalo, Finland, Apple Blossom Petals 9) by Sam Falls for $93,500, and PREFER CRYING IN A LIMO TO LAUGHING IN A BUS by John Giorno for $49,500. Tokyo mainstay SCAI The Bathouse and Antwerp’s Axel Vervoordt sold a painting by Bosco Sodi for over $100,000 to a Japanese collector.

Ultimately, it seems the selling point of the fair is not necessarily to actually sell, even for participating art dealers travelling with their wares from across the world.

“With a strong turnout from the region, we were able to gain new clients and introduce collectors to our program,” said Jack Eisenberg, a director at LA’s Matthew Brown Gallery. “With the help of [Blum’s Tokyo-based] team, we had very productive conversations even when there was a language barrier.”

Fong, of Rossi & Rossi, agreed, “This is our second year with ACK, and from my point of view, the main collaboration aspect helps us with connecting with people that we otherwise would not have known—mainly due to the language barrier.”

Correction, October 31, 2023: An earlier version of this story misstated who organized this year’s public programs at ACK. It was Greg Dvorak, not Jam Acuzar, who organized the 2022 public programs.

In a city charged with an almost neurotic intensity to make up for lost time—Hong Kong even went ahead with its landmark Credit Suisse three-day investment conference last week amid the bank’s sale to UBS, Art Basel’s main sponsor—Phillips’ opening stood out amid the various exhibitions, press conferences, parties, and dinners, organized during the past week.

Spanning over 52,000 square feet across six floors, Phillips is supposedly the first international auction house to establish a purpose-built saleroom and gallery space in the city. This is part of the company’s plans “to shake up the sale calendar,” Phillips CEO Stephen Brooks told ARTnews.

Alongside spring and fall marquee auctions, the house will begin staging more sales in Hong Kong, including some mid-season auctions. There will also be slew of program throughout the year, including a selling exhibition in late April dedicated to Yayoi Kusama and Chiharu Shiota, as well as a non-selling exhibition collaborating with Asia-based collectors to display their works.

Highly reflective of the position auction houses occupy in today’s art eco-system, Phillips is located right next to M+ Museum, another recent and widely anticipated addition to Hong Kong’s cultural landscape that also happens to be hosting Kusama’s first retrospective in greater China. (The new headquarters are located in a building designed by famed Swiss architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron, which also worked on M+ Museum.)

These developments come just eight years after Phillips held its first auctions in Hong Kong; by comparison Sotheby’s is currently celebrating 50 years in the special administrative region. “In that short amount of time, there has been a true transformation of the playing field. It now comes as no surprise that the highest value lot in our long history—a masterwork by Jean-Michel Basquiat—came from the collection of Yusaku Maezawa and was sold to another collector based in Asia for $85 million,” Brooks said.

The auction house, which is owned by Russia’s Mercury Group and faced buyout rumors last year, reported in December that 34 precent of its auction sales in 2022 came from clients based in Asia. Additionally, Asian clients also accounted for significant activity in the company’s overseas sales, garnering over 30 percent of transactional activity in their New York sales and over 20 percent in their Geneva sales last year.

However, the company’s annual statement in December revealed that Hong Kong’s auction and private sales of art and luxury items dropped from HKD $2.1 billion (around $270 million) in 2021 to HK $1.3 billion ($167 million) in 2022, which was consistent with a contraction in sales across all major auction houses in the Asia Pacific region last year.

For now, auction houses remain unfazed in their efforts to double down on Asia, but the question remains: with the rise of aspiring art capitals across the region, why Hong Kong?

Most industry insiders agree that Hong Kong has a more flexible market compared with other Asian cities, in terms of its free-trade status, comprehensive legal system with low corruption, freeport policies, low taxes, and long-established and reliable infrastructure, as well as strategic and convenient location in the center of Asia.

Local art collector Alan Lo said, “Hong Kong may no longer be the New York of Asia, but it is definitely becoming the Monaco of Asia, where people come to spend money on building art collections, super yachts, Michelin star meals, crazy expensive Burgundy wines, and mansions on the Peak.”

He continued, “In terms of where people put their assets that’s a different story. Singapore is looking very favorable, especially [in comparison] to mainland Chinese, owing to a very similar lifestyle as Hong Kong and also because Mandarin Chinese is spoken as one of the mother tongues.”

When asked about whether the auction house is applying for licenses to conduct sales in other parts of Asia Pacific, Jonathan Crockett, Phillips’s Asia chairman, responded, “We are committed to Hong Kong as the leading international arts hub in Asia, and currently have no intention of holding auctions elsewhere in the region. That said, technology has enabled us to host auctions and engage with collectors in multiple locations in a way that was not possible before.”

Ultimately, it seems that Hong Kong’s positioning as a gateway to the collectors in mainland China is the city’s primary attraction for global auction houses like Phillips.

Veteran Swiss auctioneer and art dealer Simon de Pury, who was the house’s chairman from 2001 to 2012, observed, “Phillips’ collaboration with Poly, the leading Chinese auction company, has significantly contributed to their development and greatly enhanced their access to China’s pool of buyers. The expansion of Phillips in Hong Kong therefore makes a lot of sense.”

In spite of the successful partnership, Phillips has since teamed up with a different Chinese auction house, Yongle, for its 2022 sales in Hong Kong and Beijing. However, de Pury speculated that, from a strategic point of view, the ultimate development would be a merger between Phillips and Poly, which would turbocharge each of these two companies.

“It would seal the transformation of the global auction business from a duopoly to one dominated by three players,” de Pury said. “It will create a healthy emulation and competition which will ultimately not only benefit each actor but also strengthen further the importance of Hong Kong as a key auction center.”

Inadvertently, the latest edition of ABHK heighted the divisive discourse on whether Hong Kong still possesses the status of established art capital amid the rise of rival cities, not to mention the notion of soft power wielded by problematic governments across the world.

Yet proving two things can be true all at once, there were a fair number of gallery booths at the mega fair that brought something new, different, and even probed and explored the specific crises and conflicts of our time. 

Below, a look at the best eight presentations on show at the 2023 edition of Art Basel Hong Kong, which runs until March 25.

Moreover, the main video, positioned in the middle, was cut from the original 13 minutes to 6 minutes, with two of the four key virtual gods portrayed in the work, specifically the ones closely resembling Hindu deities Kali and Shiva, notably missing. The earth and air gods, seemingly inspired by the Buddhist pantheon, remained in the video.

According to BANK, the Shanghai-based gallery representing the artist at ART SG, they had been informed via the fair that Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), the government statutory board involved in licensing arts and entertainment in the city-state, found some parts of the visuals in Electromagnetic  Brainology! concerning.

Responding to ARTnews via email, founder of BANK, Mathieu Borysevicz said, “We were told that IMDA gave Lu Yang’s video work an NC16 rating, which meant that anyone under 16 would be prohibited to view it. This would have created many obstacles for a public project, so ART SG decided instead to ask for a re-edit of the video.”

Additionally, the gallery was informed that the artwork placed in the fair’s public space with an advisory sign would not suffice.

“Initially I was opposed to this entirely as the integrity of the presentation rested upon the channels that were edited out. However, after discussion with the artist, and given the very last-minute nature of the project, we decided to move forward,” he added.

Lu was shocked when he found out Electromagnetic Brainology!, which is available online in its full version, had to be cut for ART SG. “This work is very popular and has been shown in many places all over the world including Art Basel Hong Kong,” he wrote in an email. “It never happened before. It was shown for the first time at M Woods Museum in Beijing, and it was totally not a problem. Many kids dance in front of the video, and they really like it.”

Lu was informed by BANK about the work requiring changes on December 28, exactly two weeks before the fair’s vernissage. Since he was off-site on an island in Colombia during that time, the gallery helped to edit the video work.

“At that time, the gallery also felt that it was very disrespectful to my work and proposed that it should not be exhibited. However, I accepted their request considering that the gallery had already incurred so much expenditure and a lot of work was already done in the early stage,” he explained.

Lu, who was the BMW Art Journey winner at Art Basel in 2019, believed that if the fair had told the gallery earlier, at least before the physical part of the installation was on the way to Singapore and the booths materials, walls, televisions and other equipment were in production, he would have shown a different work.

Typically, in Singapore, art exhibitions, plays, music and dance performances, variety shows, and concerts require applying for an Arts Entertainment License (AEL) from IMDA, unless exempted. This involves assessment and classification of the event and its content.

Responding to ARTnews via email, a spokesperson from IMDA stated, “The full version of film ‘Electromagnetic Brainology’ is classified NC16 (Some Mature Content). ART SG chose to screen a version with a lower rating due to the chosen venue. Exhibitors are required to adhere to the licensing conditions and enforce the relevant age restrictions.”

According to classification guidelines for films publicly available on IMDA’s website, the NC16 rating is for “mature themes that are appropriate for viewers aged 16 years and above” such as issues related to “adult life, including adultery, alternative sexualities, gender identities, promiscuity, suicide, drug/substance abuse, etc.”

In response to a query from ARTnews, Art SG sent over a lengthy statement that a spokesperson said could not be used unless it was quoted in full:

As a matter of course, any work that is being shown as part of the ART SG curated official public program, that features work in the medium of film or video, is checked with IMDA for rating purposes. The work by Lu Yang contains video and was initially rated by IMDA as NC16 meaning that it was deemed unsuitable for viewing by children under the age of 16 years. The gallery was informed about the rating as soon as we received it. It was the only film or video work to be shown on the public spaces of the show floor.

Given that children are welcome to the show, and the circumstance that the work was to be on display in an unrestricted, open and public area of the Fair, it wasn’t a context in which it would be possible to adhere to the NC16 access requirements.

In order to be able to show it in a public space, it was agreed with the gallery to create a version of the work that would allow it to be shown in an unrestricted context.

The revised version provided by the gallery was resubmitted to IMDA, and received an updated advisory rating of ‘PG 13’, which meant that the work was able to be shown without any access restraints, with a sign indicating the updated advisory rating.

We are very apologetic to the artist and gallery that the work was not able to be shown in its entirety in the space that we had allocated. We should have found a way of showing the whole work for over 16s and we will be reviewing our timelines and processes going forward to ensure such a situation doesn’t arise again.

Long-time local arts organisations tend to take a different approach to IMDA’s advisories and ratings. OH!, a homegrown arts non-profit, is known for its public art presentations in diverse spaces in Singapore, such as the exhibition “For the House; Against the House: ______ is Dead,” which was held in January in the heart of the shopping district.

“We did get advisories for certain works displayed at the recent ‘For the House; Against the House: ______ is Dead.’ We kept the works up and chose to frost the glass panels of selected shop units at Tanglin Shopping Centre to allow audiences the chance to choose whether they would like to engage with the works and exhibition,” said Lim Su Pei, deputy director of OH! Open House.

It is worth noting that Singapore, like most aspiring and established art capitals, has its own storied history of censorship. In 1994, when Singaporean artist Josef Ng’s performed a famous work that involved trimming his pubic hair, there was an intense public debate on obscenity in art. A restriction of government funding for performance art followed, lasting from 1994 to 2004.

Yet, more often than not, censorship does not come from the government but from the public, in acts of self-censorship. Artworks perceived by members of the public as being sexually explicit or going against societal norms tend to incite online furor and subsequent backtracking by the arts organisations or artists involved. This was the case in 2018 with Singaporean artist Vincent Leow’s sketch of the back of a naked man on top of a chicken exhibited at Esplanade – Theatres on The Bay.

Most recently, Belgian art collector Alain Servais, who was in town for ART SG, tweeted about posters placed strategically on the glass entrance of Hatch Art Project, an art gallery in Singapore’s hipster enclave, showcasing Vietnamese artist Nguyễn Quốc Dũng’s ongoing solo show “The Lives of Others.” Dũng’s work typically focuses on vulnerable communities, such as migrant workers and transgender people, portraying their nude forms in private spaces.

Servais learned from staff that the posters were placed on the glass doors to partially conceal Dũng’s nude paintings as passersby supposedly made disturbed facial expressions while looking at the artworks as they walked by the gallery. ARTnews reached out to Hatch Art Project and Dũng. Both parties declined to comment.

As Servais observed, “Contemporary art is about making you think about things you may want or may not want to think about but it should be one’s choice to turn the head away and not some public authority’s decision or worst, the vicious hydra of self-censorship.”

Initiated by STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery and the National Arts Council, S.E.A. Focus presents mostly galleries from Singapore and Southeast Asia, a region inciting a great deal of global interest at the moment.  

Emi Eu, executive director of STPI and project director of S.E.A. Focus, told ARTnews, “It is great to finally have more international dialogue on Singapore’s role in the global art market and as a hub for Southeast Asia. We hope that this will translate to stimulating the region’s art market, and in turn catapult Singapore’s standing as a global art market player.”

Hong Kong–based art dealer Pascal de Sarthe, whose gallery is exhibiting at the fair, observed that the Southeast Asian art market is still emerging and is increasingly drawing the attention of collectors globally. “For the last few years, Singapore has grown to be an even more appealing financial hub within the Asian region, to the benefit of the Southeast Asian art ecosystem,” he said.

Eu believes S.E.A. Focus will only continue to benefit from this ongoing momentum: “Especially when we are also physically located in Singapore’s up and coming arts enclave at Tanjong Pagar Distripark [alongside a historic port in the city], we are also seeing other galleries joining and growing this cluster, such as Gajah, Art Agenda, 39+ Art Space, and, more recently, Whitestone Gallery.”

Often described as a platform rather than an art fair, S.E.A. Focus originally launched in 2019 as an alternative to then-declining and now-defunct fair, Art Stage Singapore. It moved to its current location, during the pandemic and adapted a booth-less exhibition format with a curatorial theme for each edition. This year’s theme is “a world, anew.” Prior to this, it used to be held at Gillman Barracks, another visual arts enclave in Singapore, which is currently being transformed into a lifestyle destination.

This year’s edition is simple and straight-forward in its presentation with a contained selection of works on show, allowing visitors to cover the fair quickly. One of the standout sections at S.E.A. Focus belongs to 39+ Art Space, a first-time fair participant presenting a solo presentation of Indonesian artist Jumaadi. Titled “Almost Natural,” the works on view are intricate, detailed acrylic paintings on buffalo hide.

“The artist’s approach gave a contemporary language to the classic material that is important in many Asian cultures. Visitors have been intrigued by the historical and cultural context of the works,” said Chinese art dealer Liu Ying Mei, who opened 39+ Art Space in Singapore last year.

Dealers on the ground also reported strong interest, though both S.E.A. Focus and participating galleries do not typically share sales reports during the fair’s run.

According to French collector Guillaume Levy-Lambert, who runs Art Porters Gallery in Singapore, “Visitors come out of S.E.A. Focus energized by our presentation, its freshness and variety.” The gallerist reported that by Monday morning re-hanging was required as three out of four works by Malaysian artist Chok Yue Zan’s works had sold in the first few days of the fair.

Interestingly, several galleries participating in S.E.A. Focus will also have at booth at ART SG this week. They view doing so as a natural choice, since “both fairs have different objectives. One is a platform focused on Southeast Asian galleries and artists; the other is a major international fair with a much broader mandate,” Levy-Lambert said.

The latest edition of the smaller fair also includes the launch of the SAM S.E.A. Focus Art Fund, a new program involving a jury selection of outstanding works at the fair which will be donated to the Singapore Art Museum’s collection with the support of couple Yenn Wong and Alan Lo, restauranteurs and arts patrons based in Hong Kong and Singapore, for a period of three years. The inaugural works acquired through the fund are a series of 13 works by Indonesian artist Agung Kurniawan presented by Jakarta-based gallery ROH Projects; and Mercurial Inscription (2022), a video work by Malaysian artist Tan Zi Hao, presented by Kuala Lumpur–based gallery A+ Works of Art.

“Singapore is asserting itself as a major influence on the regional art ecosystem, but its cultural output remains under-represented on the global art scene,” Lo said. “We see the SAM S.E.A. Focus Fund as a crucial initiative to build and expand a meaningful legacy for art from Southeast Asia.”

Eu agreed, “For every edition of S.E.A. Focus, our ultimate wish is for visitors to discover something new about Southeast Asia through its art, artists, and the dialogue around it. We hope that everyone will come away from [the fair] with a deeper understanding and appreciation of Southeast Asian contemporary art.”

In fact, ART SG happens during the same time as the eleventh edition of Singapore Art Week, running from January 6–15. While the annual art week calendar can seem intimidatingly packed, here are five highly diverse exhibitions worth checking out in various locations across the island, beyond the usual museums and galleries.

ART SG has faced its share of uncertainty and turbulence since the announcement of its launch in 2018—and the several delays that followed. But the fair is finally happening and opening its doors this week at the Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre. Running from Wednesday through Sunday, over 160 galleries from across Asia and beyond are participating in the event.

But why is everyone talking about ART SG? How is it different from the slew of international fairs launching in the region, if at all? Below, all of your pressing questions about Asia’s latest mega-fair, answered.

What is ART SG?

ART SG is organized by Art Assembly, an international fair conglomerate behind Taipei Dangdai, India Art Fair, Sydney Contemporary, PHOTOFAIRS Shanghai, as well as the forthcoming Tokyo Gendai, set to launch in July. Art Assembly, which focuses on the Asia Pacific region, is led by art fair veterans Sandy Angus, Tim Etchells, and Magnus Renfrew.

Their typical fair tends to offer art and programming that connects with the specific regional and local market, while also branding itself as an international platform featuring blue-chip galleries such as White Cube, Gagosian, and David Zwirner. This approach has allowed their portfolio of art fairs to stay afloat and relevant even during the “fairtigue” of the late 2010s, as well as the pandemic.

So, what’s the deal with all the postponements?

In July 2018, the fair was announced as a joint venture between Art Basel’s parent company, MCH Group, Sandy Angus of Angus Montgomery Arts, and event organizer Tim Etchells. Over 80 galleries were slated for its launch at the Sands Expo on November 1, 2019.

However, following the resignation of its longtime CEO, René Kamm, and due to the company’s financial troubles, MCH pulled out of several regional fairs it had stakes in, including ART SG at the end of 2018. Subsequently, the fair was pushed to launch later in the month of November 2019.

A few months after the last-minute cancellation of Art Stage Singapore in January 2019, the city’s previous large-scale art fair with international ambitions, ART SG announced its postponement to October 2020. Organizers extended the application period, reportedly based on requests from galleries for more time to prepare, but it was clear the financial woes and collapse of Art Stage Singapore had shaken confidence in the country’s nascent art market.

Then came the pandemic, which understandably pushed the fair to November 2021. Come February 2021, it was postponed for the fourth time to January 2022. Officially, it was to align with the annual Singapore Art Week, but Covid-related travel and social gathering restrictions were also likely a concern.

Finally, in November 2021, when there was no sign of an exhibitor list and global supply chain issues were at its height, the fair announced it was being postponed to January 2023.

Why Singapore?

Funnily enough, if not for ART SG’s multitude of postponements, the fair would not be happening at a time of unprecedented interest in Singapore’s fledgling art market. This is due to the city-state recently becoming the go-to base in Asia for global companies as well as wealthy individuals, families, and businesses from across the region. Many of them have departed Hong Kong, which long had preeminence as Asia’s art market capital, thanks to Singapore’s evenhanded Covid restrictions and its longstanding reputation as an international finance hub.

“As the world opens up post-Covid, Singapore has emerged as one of the most progressive economies, and we have observed that wealthy collectors from across Asia are increasingly settling in the city and using it as their base,” Jonathan Crockett, chairman of Phillips Asia, told ARTnews in 2022.

This past year alone, Sotheby’s held its first sale in Singapore in over a decade, with other major auction houses holding previews and engaging with clients in the city. And MCH Group even bought back a minority stake in ART SG, in addition to Art Basel partnering with local boutique fair S.E.A. Focus, which opened January 6 and runs until January 15.

When ART SG announced its long-awaited exhibitor list in June, the number of galleries participating doubled from the original slate of 80 exhibitors in 2018. And timed with the fair’s launch, Hong Kong’s WOAW Gallery and Tokyo’s Whitestone Gallery opened their own outposts in Singapore, while Lehmann Maupin appointed a Singapore based director to oversee their business in Southeast Asia.

How much does a ticket cost?

A weekday pass costs S$35 ($26) and a weekend pass costs S$40 ($30), both cheaper than access to Frieze Seoul, which cost 70,000 won ($55) for general admission, though the latter provided access to sister fair KIAF Seoul as well.

Does Singapore have other art fairs?

There’s the infamous Art Stage Singapore, which admittedly was successful when it first launched in 2011, attracting the attention of international collectors and art world professionals interested in Southeast Asia’s art and artists. However, due to a range of factors from high costs to leadership issues, the fair has struggled in its last few editions, as the number of participating galleries dropped, before going bust.

Launched in 2019 as an alternative to the declining Art Stage, S.E.A Focus has held its own as a smaller platform focusing mostly on galleries from Singapore and Southeast Asia. Operated by local mainstay STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery and the National Arts Council, Singapore, it is running for two weeks at Tanjong Pagar Distripark, the city’s renewed visual arts cluster. This is the fair’s second year of partnership with Art Basel.

There’s also Affordable Art Fair Singapore, which went from two annual editions to one in 2017, during a time art fairs in Singapore were facing difficulties and closures. The fair was also on a three-year hiatus because of the pandemic. However, its comeback edition last fall saw an uptick in sales amounting to S$4.5 million, with a few booths sold out on the very first day.

How is ART SG different from Frieze Seoul or Art Basel Hong Kong?

ART SG seems to have all the hallmarks of a global art fair, but it also aims to highlight its geographical connection to Southeast Asia, which has some of the most diverse and dynamic art scenes in the world.

In fact, one of the most popular fairs in Southeast Asia is ArtJog, an annual artist-led fair held since 2008 in Yogyakarta, familiarly known as Jogja, one of Indonesia’s renowned art centers. Eschewing the typical art fair format of booth architecture or gallery participation, ArtJog is more of a contemporary art festival with works on sale. However, its curation of artworks and impressive community of artists have attracted visitors from other parts of Asia Pacific and drawn critical acclaim over the years.

That kind of originality and cultural depth could be a much-needed breath of fresh air to the typically standard mega art fair template. Hopefully, this is something visitors can look forward to at ART SG.

Lehmann Maupin is expanding its presence in Asia with the appointment of Singapore-based director, Ken Tan, to oversee the gallery’s activities in Southeast Asia (SEA). Tan is a Singaporean art adviser who previously served as the executive director of global artistic programs and deputy director at New York’s Asia Society Museum. He was also director of Marc Straus Gallery in New York.

“While our interest in the region is not new, our decision to double down is the result of the growing demand we’ve observed among committed collectors in SEA,” Rachel Lehmann, cofounder of Lehmann Maupin, told ARTnews in an email interview.

Meanwhile, on January 12, Hong Kong restaurateur, entrepreneur, art collector, and DJ Kevin Poon will launch a Singapore outpost of his popular contemporary art gallery WOAW in a 1,100-square-foot shophouse space at the city’s Central Business District. Exactly a week earlier, Whitestone Gallery, a mainstay in Japan since the ’60s, will open a new 13,000-square-foot space at Tanjong Pagar Distripark, the visual arts cluster right next to Singapore’s historic port.

The galleries’ foray into Singapore is not entirely unexpected, given the growing global interest in its art market.

“You can see where the recent auction houses have been holding their major previews,” said Tan.

Auction houses, and now galleries, are keen to gain a foothold in the city because recent global economic shifts have strengthened Singapore’s position as a finance and trading capital even as recession looms. Since the pandemic, the port city is quickly becoming Asia’s family office hub, thanks to its comparatively low taxes and an ongoing exodus from mainland China and Hong Kong.

Poon stated that “the influx of people in finance, crypto, arts, and culture” is one of the reasons that now is the moment “to enter the market and really be one of the few international galleries entering Singapore.”

Key events and art fairs will further stimulate Singapore’s art market. ART SG, a long-awaited fair, will launch its first edition on January 11; it has backing from Art Basel’s parent company, MCH Group. Art Basel is also in its second year of a partnership with local boutique art fair S.E.A. Focus, which will run from January 5 to 15.

Being close to Southeast Asian growth markets is also a major draw. “Singapore’s geographic proximity to countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia, as well as its existing trade with Australia, makes it a perfect entry point to a greater ecosystem of support for contemporary art across institutions and private collections,” said Lehmann.

“As the center of trade and business in SEA that represents an epicenter of economic development, Singapore is one of the most important city-states in the world,” according to Whitestone Gallery CEO Koei Shiraishi, who also plans to open spaces in Beijing and Seoul this year. “The gallery in Singapore will serve as our base in SEA.”

Those familiar with the region often point out how the complex and vibrant cultures of Southeast Asia are frequently overlooked, especially in the art world. One of Shiraishi’s objectives in opening a gallery space in Singapore is to learn more about the diverse cultures and values of Singapore and SEA, in a bid to build a deeper understanding of the local and regional art scene.

Tan, too, hopes the art world would take a deeper look into the cultural diversity of the region: “We may all face the same global peaks and troughs, but dive into the micro-communities of languages and folk stories, and how we bond over food, and you will start to see how these colorful nuances permeate art and life.”

Nonetheless, this is not the first time international and regional galleries have set up shop in Singapore. A decade ago, outposts of renowned galleries such as Tokyo’s Ota Fine Arts, Manila’s Silverlens, and New York’s Sundaram Tagore Gallery opened as part of the launch of a contemporary art enclave, Gillman Barracks, following the success of the now-defunct fair Art Stage Singapore. Around 2015, however, Silverlens and Tomio Koyama Gallery from Japan closed their spaces in Singapore largely due to low sales and visitorship.

While Mizuma Gallery and Sundaram Tagore Gallery remain, Hong Kong’s Pearl Lam Galleries and Berlin’s Galerie Michael Janssen have left the city. The latter even had a landmark Ai Weiwei solo show in 2013.

A common challenge for galleries looking to set up physical outposts in Singapore is the high cost of renting space there. It doesn’t seem as though rents will get lower, either, given the skyrocketing local rental market and Singapore’s ranking alongside New York as the most expensive city in the world.

Industry experts also admit that the local arts scene is still relatively nascent compared to those of other countries in SEA and Asia.

“There are many attractive opportunities and prospects in this part of the world, not just in Singapore. Many new galleries and private museums have opened in countries such as the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, and South Korea,” according to Rita Targui, gallery director at Singapore Tyler Print Institute and president of the Art Galleries Association of Singapore.

“There is also the question of whether Singapore has the critical mass to sustain a viable arts ecosystem,” she said.

Tan agreed, saying, “Having lived and worked in New York for many years, I constantly remind myself that as far as the art and culture ecosystem go, Singapore is still only adolescent, and slightly hormonal!” However, dealers are of one mind that this lack could present itself as a growth opportunity. “Singapore only found independence as a country in 1965, so the potential to go deeper and wider is immense,” said Tan.