Asia’s second-largest art market, Hong Kong, regained momentum at Art Basel last week, recording millions of dollars in deals in a city where political artistic expression is suppressed by law.

More than 86,000 visitors roamed the exhibition halls of the international contemporary art fair, which has regained its pre-pandemic scale with sales of more than $98 million reported by Art Basel, twice as high as 2019.

Among the works sold, Picasso’s “Girl in a Beret” sold for 5.5 million dollars or one of the famous pumpkins by the Japanese Yayoi Kusama acquired for 3.5 million, according to data disclosed by the fair.

Published at the discretion of the galleries, the transactions concluded have not all been communicated, however, such as the price of the “kinetic sculpture” of Beeple, put up for sale at 9 million dollars.

“Asia is the fastest growing art market in the world,” Angelle Siyang-Le, director of Art Basel Hong Kong (ABHK), told AFP.

“Look at the quality of the visitors”, enthuses Sébastien Carvalho, director of the Parisian gallery Mitterrand, installed near a “White Nana” by Niki de Saint Phalle.

“People from all over Asia come here, very high-level collectors” who are “not afraid to put in the means”, he comments to AFP.

Hong Kong totaled more than $1.16 billion at auction in 2022, behind Beijing ($2.01 billion), according to analytics firm Artprice.

But personal freedoms have been severely curtailed in the financial hub since Beijing imposed its tough national security law after pro-democracy protests in 2019.

The 2020 law “created self-censorship in the creative industry,” said Kacey Wong, an artist who left the city in 2021 due to the crackdown.

“Just because the sales figures at Art Basel are good doesn’t mean that Hong Kong is back,” he asserts, because “artists are instead turning to ornamental and colorful subjects to avoid red lines” of the law.

Last week, an artwork featuring the names of imprisoned Hong Kong protesters was removed from a huge billboard in the heart of the city.

Fair officials, on the other hand, assured AFP that the censorship had “had no impact” on their work.

“We are confident that we will operate the same as before,” Ms Siyang-Le said.

While Hong Kong was paralyzed by its drastic health restrictions, some neighboring megacities made a name for themselves in the art market, such as Seoul which took over Frieze in September, or Singapore which launched a new fair in January.

“Hong Kong retains the advantage of a well-structured market, with the presence of major international players (…) which translates into a considerable lead in terms of sales revenue”, however asserts Thierry Ehrmann, director of Artprice. .

One of the advantages of the Chinese metropolis is the absence of customs duties, value-added taxes or inheritance taxes on works of art.

“The potential of this region is immense,” enthused Alex Branczik, head of modern and contemporary art Asia at Sotheby’s, to AFP.

For the three main auction houses in the world, Hong Kong is “the new Eldorado”, notes Artprice in its latest study: Christie’s achieved 8% of its global turnover on works of art there, in 2022 , Sotheby’s 12% and Phillips 13%.

“The average price of a work is always higher there than anywhere else on earth: 280,000 dollars”, argues Mr. Ehrmann.

China weighs 24% of the world art market, in 2nd place behind the United States, against 35% in 2021, after having seen its sales drop by 34% in 2022 due to the pandemic, according to Artprice.

But the auction houses are betting that the slowdown will not last, and are even planning ambitious expansions of their Hong Kong activities from 2024.

Sotheby’s, headquartered in New York, now has as many bidders in Asia as in North America.

“It’s an essential pillar of our business. And not just in Hong Kong,” he adds, noting that Asian bidders are also “essential” in auction houses in London, New York and Paris.

In 2022, two thirds of its new customers were Asian and “significantly younger”, says the manager.

Last year, Sotheby’s signed a 2,230 m2 rental lease in the heart of Central, the Hong Kong business district with some of the most expensive rents in the world.

But outside the city’s artistic elite, some artists make a harder living from their work.

“I think auction houses and collectors will be smart enough to steer clear of controversial artists and works” that may be deemed seditious, says Taiwan exile Wong, who says he does not “dare” exhibit in Hong Kong.

29/03/2023 06:50:27 –         Hong Kong (AFP) –         © 2023 AFP