LuxArtAsia

The top lot of Christie's London sale on Jun 11 will be Mahishasura, 1996, by Tyeb Mehta, the most important painting from this groundbreaking series to come to auction.

Christie’s spring sale of Hong Kong Magnificent Jewels raised $80.2 mln and was sold with 79% by lot and 82% by value (not as good a sellthrough than in some other categories).

Having appeared on the market for the first time in 36 years, The Martian Pink sold achieved a staggering $17.4 mln after a 10-minute bidding war.   

This is the largest round Fancy Intense Pink diamond to ever appear at auction. The property of a prominent Private collector, this pink stone was purchased from Harry Winston in 1976, the very same year, the United States launched its first satellite on a mission to Mars. The Viking landers were the pioneering spacecrafts to first land on the Red Planet, carrying with them the American flag across millions of miles of interplanetary space. For Ronald Winston, the colour of the 12.04-carat pink diamond was so intense that he named it "Martian Pink"¦ to honour and celebrate this historic event.

DONG QICHANG (1555-1636) Poems in Running Script Calligraphy

Christie’s spring sale of Fine Chinese Classical Paintings and Calligraphy raised $26.4 million with an overall sold rate of 86% by lot and 91% by value, generating the highest earning sale in the history of the Chinese Classical Painting category for Christie’s.

Ben Kong, International Specialist Head of Christie’s Chinese Paintings Department, said the total sale volume was up 52% on the same sale last spring, making this one the most valuable Chinese Classical Paintings & Calligraphy sale in the history of Christie’s. 

Of particular note was Dong Qichang’s work, Poems in Running Script Calligraphy, which contains the collectors’ seals of Emperor Qianlong and Emperor Jiaqing and is published in the critically acclaimed literature, Shiqu Baoji. After several rounds of fierce bidding, the work was sold for HK$57,780,000, over ten times the pre-sale estimate.

Chu Teh-Chun, Le Odeur du Ciel No.1

Bonhams Contemporary Art Department’s first dedicated sale in Hong Kong raisaed $11.6 million, more than doubling the pre-sale estimate of $3.4 - 4.8 million.

Christie’s HK sale of Fine & Rare Wines: The Property of a Gentleman Part II on Saturday totaled $2.6 million, 100% sold both by lots and by value. David Elswood, International Head of Wine Sales, commented, the sale results proved that Asian demand for Bordeaux wines of the finest quality and provenance is "alive and well."

Palomar Observatory

James Cohan Gallery Shanghai is currently presenting the solo exhibition The Infinite Lawn by Shanghai-based artist Shi Zhiying.

Known for her stark black and white paintings depicting vast views of the sea, endless landscapes of scattered rocks, traditional sand gardens and intricate blades of grass, Shi’s paintings are at once deeply visceral and contemplative.

Palomar - Forward I

Top lot - Sanyu

Christie's HK Evening Sale of Asian 20th Century and Contemporary Art raised $46.6 million with 91 percent of the lot sold and 96% sold by value, sending a strong message to the market about the confidence of buyers in this category. Of the 41 lots sold, 7 sold in excess of HK$10 mln or US$1.29 mln.

Wu Guangzhong’s A Fish Pool in the Mountain City topped Bonhams Hong Kong Auction of Fine Chinese Paintings and Contemporary Asian Art . Over 170 lots went under the hammer and spirited bidding drove the top lots over their high estimates, achieving a total of over HK$52 mln

Claes Oldenburg Profile Airflow, 1969 Cast polyurethane relief over two-color lithograph in aluminum frame © 1969 Claes Oldenburg Photo courtesy the Oldenburg van Bruggen Studio Singapore Art Museum collection

The Singapore Tyler Print Institute was established in 2002 under the guidance of the groundbreaking American master printer Kenneth E. Tyler. While it had a difficult birth, with Tyler leaving abruptly shortly after relocating his NY printmaking facility in Singapore, the institute quickly established itself as a key center for experimental print making in Asia, reaching out to top Asian artists that have mostly produced extremely interesting works over the years.

Alan Shields

Say Hi to Forever, a solo exhibition by Singaporean artist SooKoon Ang, will open at Chan Hampe Galleries @ Tanjong Pagar, which is located at 27 Kreta Ayer Road, on May 29th.  Ang was recently featured in the exhibition “The Singapore Show: Futureproof” at the Singapore Art Museum. She works with various media, including video, installation, drawing and printmaking.

“The Drops of God” (Kami no Shizuku) is a famed Japanese manga comic series (and now TV series) about wines which first appeared in Japan in 2004. Its impact on wine sales in Japan was phenomenal and a few years ago, it also catapulted the little known 2003 vintage of Château le Puy into oenological stardom when it was featured as the greatest wine of all in its pages.

The confidence in the Chinese Contemporary art market has been increasing since ArtTactic launched its first Chinese survey in February 2009. However, recent findings could suggest that the market is slowing down after 3 years of rapid growth. Though it remains firmaly above the 50 level, showing continuing optimism, the ArtTactic Confidence Indicator  decreased 5.7% from 80 in November to 76 in May.

Japanese artist Ai Yamaguchi has opened in Hong Kongher first solo exhibition. The contemporary artist has achieved an international reputation for her strongly characterized style and unique synthesis of the traditional Japanese ukiyoe style with contemporary interpretation, as she incorporates a realistic quality of animé into her imaginative landscapes using the "flat" style of Japanese paintings.

For the exhibition at 10 Chancery Lane Gallery, Yamaguchi installed her largest multi-canvas work to date inside the gallery's space in SoHo, complemented with large site-specific wall murals. These works, entitled ashita mata, take their reference from calligraphy and are deliberately made into pieces, suggesting a fleeting feeling of a lost unity.

Roderic Wong

Audi Star Creation 2012 crowned three new winners this week: Chinese designer Roderic Wong (Liang Wang), 27, whose womenswear collection, Tissue of Being, paid homage to handmade craftsmanship with the designer developing his own fabric; Thai designer Soravit Kaewkamon, 23, and her menswear collection Love and Friendship, and Korean designer Ko Youngji, 32, whose Womenswear collection, Li Jin, drew on the tradional blues, greens and pinks of a saekdong and merged them with Western fabrics. Each winner got $10,000 from Audi and an internship with FJ Benjamin.

Soravit Kaewkamon

Ko Youngji

The three winners of last year also presented the result of their internship. Malaysian designer Tiang Boon Tieon's capsule collection was full of interesting drape and foldings, like this stunning white coat (below) and borrow heavily from menswear.

Tiang Boon Tieon

Tiang Boon Tieon

Tiang Boon Tieon

Singapore designer Tsai Ming Hung had interesting knitwear and clothes juxtapositions

Tsai Ming Hung

Tsai Ming Hung

Tsai Ming Hung

 Chinese designer Chen ZHi Gang played on assymetry and bold colors with long elegant and fluid silhouettes

ART HK is in full swing...



According to organizers, major sales of Asian and Western Contemporary Art have included:
-De Sarthe Gallery from Hong Kong sold No. 313, 1969 by Chinese artist Chu Teh-Chun for over US $3 million to a South East Asian collector. The gallery also sold Hans Hartung’s work T1966-H32, 1966 to a Singaporean collector for US $400,000.

-Tornabuoni Art sold five works by Alighiero Boetti from their solo presentation of his work, including Mappa, 1984 which sold for EUR 1 million.
-Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 45, 1960 by Robert Motherwell was sold by Bernard Jacobson Gallery for US $1 million.
-White Cube sold George Baselitz’s Stalin und Woroschilov pissen von der Kremlmover for EUR 500,000 to an Asian collector.
-Hauser & Wirth London and Zurich sold Western Mash Monument, 2006/2011, a fine silver sculpture by Paul McCarthy, for US $450,000 to a Latin American collection.
=Sprüth Magers Berlin London sold Sterling Ruby’s work SP191, 2011 for US $155,000 to an Australian collector and George Condo’s Toy Head, 2012 for US $150,000 to an Asian collector.
=Blum & Poe from Los Angeles sold two works by Zhu Jinshi , No.5, 2006 and Thick Strokes, No.4, 2006 for US $70,000 each to an Asian collector

Gideon Rubin

Dutch photogapher Marcel Heijnen’s new solo show "Residue 2.0" will open at Gallery Utama on River Valley Road in Singapore May 31. His works look like paintings but are actually photographs – unaltered thanks to a method Heijnen has developed shooting through a clear glass pane. Yes, no reliance on any digital trickely here, the images are neither photoshopped or use a double exposures!
The results are poetic and intriguing, mixing the decay of a weathered wall with the reflection of existing buildings.

A white and russet jade "Immortal" brushpot, Qing Dynasty, Qianlong Period sold for $2.47 million at Sotheby's London sale of Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art, helping bring total sales to $20.5 million, more than doubling the pre-sale low estimate for the entire auction.

The newly discovered brushpot was notable for its large size and exquisitely carved with scenes from the "Land of Immortals."

Why wait until the latest runway look presented to fashion buyers and journalists hit your favorite stores? Future Fashion Now is debuting this week as the world’s first shopping experience to offer consumers the chance to immediately purchase the latest designer pre-collections off the runway via a digital platform. From 17 – 19 May , consumers can log into www.futurefashionnow.com to watch the live streaming of Pre-Spring (Cruise) Collection 2013 shows of 13 designers, and at the same time pre-order and secure their favorite pieces from those collections.

May is always the month for performing art lovers. The Singapore Art Festival is this year celebrating its 35th and coming full circle with a programme line-up that celebrates communities in Singapore through a re-discovery of their untold stories. With 44 ticked events and 66 non-ticketed productions there is plenty to chose from. Separetly from the festival, some of the world top classical musicians will also be in town: Yuri Bashmet, who has been hailed as one of the world's greatest living violinist and the grammy award-winning soloists of Moscow will present on May 25th an exciting program mixing Mozart, Paganini, Rossini, Stravinsky and Tchaikovski.. a real treat!

The Singapore Art Festival has what promises to be some very interesting Asian art performances. Here are my picks :

La Route de Vétheuil by Monet

A selling exhibition, Corot to Monet – French Landscape Painting in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries , will mark the opening of Sotheby’s new gallery space in Hong Kong and will run May 19-31. The exhibition will then travel to Beijing (June 22-25) at the Park Hyatt.

Wood from dismantled temples finds a new incarnation in Ai Weiwei’s massive “Fragments,” on view now in the SMithsonian's Arthur Sackler Gallery until April 2013. “Fragments” explores the role of tradition amidst the reality of living in today’s rapidly changing China.

The enfant terrible of the Thai contemporary art scene, Vasan Sitthiket, has just opened Hypocrisy at the Thavibu Gallery, an exhibition that features a series of paintings as well as an installation of Thai amulets (palad khik), carved from wood recovered from the 2011 floods, which are in the form of phalli. In this exhibition, he explores 'hypocrisy' and its many facets, in particular with reference to the conflict in the Middle East.

Masriadi - Gajah Gallery

We are less than one week away from the very much awaited Art HK 12 fair (May 17-20) and some of the 266 galleries have started sending previews of the art works they will show.. Here are a few pieces that caught my eye...

For "Leather Forever‟ exhibition, an exhibition of Hermes bags that opens in London today, Hermès has created four one-of-a-kind versions of its Passe-Guide handbag representing England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales; a tribute to the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Christie’s will conduct a time-based online-only auction of the handbags which will run during and after the exhibition. The auction will begin on May 14 and and each bag will be sold to the highest bidder on Mar 31. All proceeds from the auction will be donated to the Royal Academy of Arts.

Bencab's Street Subjects

Hands Across The Water, an exhibition at Visual Art at Temenggong opening Jun 2, promises to be a very interesting one, given the "heavyweights" it presents together: Bencab, Zakii and Mexico's premier sculptor Sebastian (you know artists have arrived when one only uses their first names!). 



Purified Flag

Sakarin Krue‐On (Thailand) Cloud Nine, 2004

The Singapore Art Museum has been hard at work building a collection of Southeast Asian contemporary art in the last few years. Its efforts are now for all to see with Panorama: Recent Art from Southeast Asia, an exhibition of only some of the 300 works or so that the museum has acquired (some works were donated by artists) over the last 3 years. There is the very good and the not so good (and the downright awfull... so I will only concentrate on what I liked!)

LIU YE, Angels in Flight , 1998

Christie’s Hong Kong will sell 11 pieces owned by European collector Anna Maria Jagdfeld in both the Evening and Day Sales on May 26-27.  The collection comprises 11 works by contemporary Chinese masters such as Liu Ye, Zhang Xiaogang, Zeng Fanzhi, Tang Zhigang, Ai Xuan and Yang Shaobin. Christie's did not provide any explanation on how these pieces were acquired, but Ms. Jagdfeld is founder and owner of Departmentstore Quartier 206 in Berlin.

ZHANG XIAOGANG, Bloodline: Big Family, 1999

Christie's HK will hold the preview of its May sale in Singapore at the ArtScience Museum May 5-6 (10.30 am–7.30 pm, free).

Pearl Lam Galleries will re-open a space in Hong Kong on May 16, on the eve of ART HK. The 340sqm gallery will be located on the sixth floor of the historic Grade II listed Pedder Building, alongside Gagosian, Ben Brown and Hanart TZ, at the heart of Hong Kong’s growing contemporary art scene.

The inaugural exhibition will take a fresh look at Chinese contemporary abstract painting featuring artworks by eight leading Chinese abstract artists of different generations including Li Xiaojing, Qin Yufen, Qiu Zhenzhong, Zhu Jinshi , Yan Binghui , Su Xiaobai, Zhang Jianjun and Li Huasheng.

The gallery has already announced solo shows by Zaha Hadid in 2012 and Yinka Shonibare in 2013. 

Pearl Lam is a well-known art collector, who has already a gallery presence in Shanghai. She had first opened a gallery in HK in the 90s, but later closed it.