Monday, March 31, 2025

What Sold at Art Basel Hong Kong 2025 https://ift.tt/EGIKFTp

The 12th edition of Art Basel Hong Kong wrapped up on Sunday, March 30th, following five buzzy days that drew enthusiastic crowds to the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. The event featured 240 galleries from 42 countries and welcomed a total of 91,000 attendees across the course of the fair, well above the 75,000 figure reported for last year’s edition.

This year’s Hong Kong Art Week—which included additional fairs such as Supper Club and a series of tentpole sales at major auction houses—got underway at a cautious moment for the city and its art market, a fact noted by those in attendance.

“Going into this year’s Art Basel Hong Kong, there was definitely a sense of uncertainty,” local gallerist Pearl Lam told Artsy. “The past few years have brought shifts in the market, and we weren’t sure how collectors, especially those who have been more cautious, would respond.” However, Lam noted that the week offered a “reassuring sign that confidence is returning.”

“The strong gallery participation, institutional support, and serious engagement from collectors all point to Hong Kong reaffirming its position as a vital art hub,” she added. “While it’s not without its challenges, the fair proved it’s an important step in restoring momentum.”

This sentiment was evident in robust deal-making across the fair, particularly by blue-chip galleries. Leading the sales was a $3.5 million Yayoi Kusama work titled INFINITY-NETS [ORUPX] (2013), sold by David Zwirner (all prices and sales are listed in U.S. dollars unless otherwise stated). While blue-chip exhibitors secured several seven-figure sales, the overall pace of transactions was more measured, reflecting the mood of the region’s emerging collector base.

“In general, collectors in Asia are increasingly likely to conduct thorough research before committing to a purchase, as the collectors build a greater understanding of the art market and value making informed decisions,” Angelle Siyang-Le, the director of Art Basel Hong Kong, told Artsy. “While there are always strong sales at the outset, we also see visitors who join us on VIP day return several times throughout the week. Collectors from Hong Kong, mainland China, and across the Asia Pacific region aren’t just interested in acquiring works—they want to build long-term relationships with galleries and develop a deeper understanding of the artists they encounter. It’s a nuanced approach to collecting, one that values education and connection.”

Another key development, noted Siyang-Lee, is the emergence of a new generation of collectors who “tend to be open-minded as they explore different artists, especially when it comes to mediums—from digital and sculptural works to the more ephemeral and unconventional.” This was evident in the popularity of Art Basel’s Discoveries section, which spotlights emerging galleries and artists, as well as in a series of standout booths across the fair that highlighted innovative names.

Also notable was the inaugural MGM Discoveries Art Prize, which was awarded to Shin Min and P21, the Seoul-based gallery that represents her. Min’s installation Ew! There is hair in the food! (2025) drew visitors throughout the fair. The artist and her gallery received a $50,000 cash prize and the opportunity to exhibit in Macau.

Here, we round up the key sales reported by galleries at Art Basel Hong Kong 2025.


Top sales at Art Basel Hong Kong 2025

Mexican Singer, 2023
Rose Wylie
David Zwirner

Other than the Kusama sale, David Zwirner’s leading reported sale was Michaël Borremans’s Bob (2025), which sold for $1.6 million to the Corridor Foundation in Shenzhen, China. Other reported sales included:

Hauser & Wirth’s reported sales were led by Louise Bourgeois’s Cove (1988/2010), which sold for $2 million. Other reported sales included:

White Cube’s reported sales were led by Georg Baselitz’s Hannoversche Treue (2010), which sold for €1.75 million ($1.83 million). Other reported sales included:

  • Damien Hirst’s Inperturbatus (2023) for $850,000.
  • Georg Baselitz’s Mano (2019) for €650,000 ($703,000).
  • Tracey Emin’s There was so much more of me (2019) for £520,000 ($672,000) and Sex and Solitude (2025) for £85,000 ($109,900).
  • Antony Gormley’s OPEN GUT (2023) for £500,000 ($646,000) and HOIST II (2019) for £500,000 ($646,000).
  • Shao Fan’s Rabbit 1624 (2024) for $130,000.
  • Zhou Li’s 2025 Metamorphosis No.1 (2025) for $50,000 and Landscape of nowhere: Water and Dream (2022) for $42,000.
  • Howardena Pindell’s Untitled (2024) for $325,000.
  • Mona Hatoum’s Projection (abaca) (2006) for £55,000 ($71,100).
  • Enrico David’s Study for a Bust I (2024) for $55,000.
  • Marguerite Humeau’s Life in a Pile of Compost IV (2024) for £40,000 ($51,700) and At the Conciliabule of Breathing Mounds I (2025) for £40,000 ($51,700).
  • Theaster Gates’s Civil Color Study with Red Hose, Variation 3 (2013) for an undisclosed amount.

The top sale reported by Thaddaeus Ropac was Roy Lichtenstein’s Water Lily Pond with Reflections (1992), which sold for $1.5 million. Other reported sales included:

  • Georg Baselitz’s Luise, Lilo, Franz und Johannes (2010) for €1.2 million ($1.29 million).
  • Alex Katz’s Ada by the Sea (1999) for $900,000, Study for From the Bridge 6 (2021) for $110,000, From the Bridge 4 (2021) for $90,000, and Dancer 3 (2019) for $18,000.
  • Daniel Richter’s Attack on Planet Hybris (2024) for €420,000 ($454,420).
  • Lee Bul’s Perdu CXI (2021) for €190,000 ($205,570).
  • Robert Rauschenberg’s Original artwork for First International Festival of Asian Film (1989) for $200,000.
  • Hans Josephsohn’s Untitled (Ruth) (1976) for CHF 180,000 ($204,051) and Untitled (1971) for CHF 70,000 ($79,353).
  • Tom Sachs’s Marie-Therese au Beret Rouge et au Col en Fourrure (2025) for $160,000.
  • Miquel Barceló’s COQUILLAGES ETC... (2024) for €130,000 ($140,653).
  • Oliver Beer’s Resonance Painting (Perfect Day) (2025) for £55,000 ($71,159).

Perrotin’s reported sales were led by Takashi Marukami’s Tan Tan Bo: Wormhole (2025), which sold for $1.35 million. Other reported sales included:

  • A work by Ali Banisadr for $350,000.
  • A series of works by Lynn Chadwick, each sold for a price in the range of £40,000–£220,000 ($51,700–$284,600).
  • A work by Izumi Kato for $185,000.
  • A work by Emma Webster for $120,000.
  • A work by Rao Fu for €95,000 ($102,700).

Pace Gallery’s sales were led by a painting by Lee Ufan, which sold for $1.1 million on the final day of the fair. The gallery also sold Ufan’s With Winds (1991) for $950,000. Other reported sales included:

  • Loie Hollowell’s Alizarin crimson and cadmium orange/red and white brain (2025) for $450,000.
  • Joel Shapiro’s Untitled (2023) for $200,000.
  • Kenneth Noland’s Untitled (1978) for $175,000.
  • Yin Xiuzhen’s Wall Instrument No. 28 (2019–21) for $110,000.
  • Alejandro Piñeiro Bello’s Rumor Interior (2025) for $85,000.
  • Alicja Kwade’s Little Be-Hide (2024) and Little Triple Be-Hide (2023) for €68,000 ($73,570) apiece.
  • Mika Tajima’s Art d’Ameublement (Moto Ku) (2025) for $60,000.
  • Kenjiro Okazaki’s Your soul creeps into mine, just like a worm in a fresh apple, nibbling deeper as it goes. Do keep the lovely peel intact though - such a pretty sight, no? Someone taught me to drink chocolate like this now. It’s my medicine. Wearing the patterns he like, waiting to hear I’m cute. Not jealous. (2023) for $55,000.
  • Kohei Nawa’s PixCell-Shoe#14 (L) (2024) for $55,000.
  • Li Hei Di’s The monstrosity lies between us (2025) for $50,000.


More notable sales from Art Basel Hong Kong 2025

Galerie Lelong & Co. sold a work by David Hockney for €750,000 ($811,460), as well as a work by Jaume Plensa for €470,000 ($508,000).

Xavier Hufkens’s sales were led by a ⁠Milton Avery painting, which sold for $800,000. Other reported sales included:

  • A ⁠Nicolas Party painting for “approximately” $500,000.
  • Two works on paper by Louise Bourgeois for prices within the range of $175,000–$350,000 apiece.
  • A work by Giorgio Griffa for €150,000 ($162,292).
  • A sculpture by Mark Manders for €135,000 ($146,000). ⁠
  • Two paintings by Ulala Imai for prices ranging from $40,000 to $110,000 apiece.⁠
  • Two sculptures by Tracey Emin for £75,000 ($97,000) apiece. ⁠
  • A Matt Connors painting for $48,000.
  • A painting by ⁠Sayre Gomez for $40,000.
  • A painting by Nathanaëlle Herbelin for €22,000 ($23,800).

David Kordansky Gallery’s reported sales were led by Jonas Wood’s Poppies 1, Poppies 3, Poppies 4 (2024), which sold for $650,000. Other reported sales included:

  • Shara Hughes’s Don't Get It Twisted (2023) for a price in the range of $450,000–$500,000.
  • Huma Bhabha’s Brownfinger (2025) for a price in the range of $250,000–$300,000.
  • Joel Mesler’s Untitled (Us) (2025) for $125,000.
  • Hilary Pecis’s Looking East (2025) for $125,000.
  • Lucy Bull’s 20:35 (2025) for a price in the range of $70,000–$120,000.
  • Lesley Vance’s Untitled (2025) for $110,000.
  • Maia Cruz Palileo’s The Spell of Solitude (2025) for $80,000.
  • Guan Xiao’s Spring Tides, Wild Grass, A Longing Waiting to Bloom (2024) for $50,000.
  • Ivan Morley’s Tragegedy, [sic] (2023) for $40,000.
  • Sam McKinniss’s Common Loon (2024) for $45,000.
  • Tristan Unrau’s Oxbow (2025) and Revelation (2025) for $25,000 apiece.
  • Torbjørn Rødland’s Dirty Feet (2023) for $16,000.
  • Simphiwe Mbunyuza’s UTSHEVULANE (2024) for $12,000.

Seoul’s Kukje Gallery reported Park Seo-Bo’s Écriture No. 040516 (2004), which sold for a price in the range of $540,000–$648,000, as its top sale. Other reported sales included:

  • Ha Chong-Hyun’s Conjunction 22-03 (2022) for a price in the range of $390,000–$468,000.
  • Lee Seung-Jio’s Nucleus 89-40 (1989) for a price in the range of $100,000–$120,000.
  • Kyungah Ham’s Phantom and A Map / poetry 01WBS01V2 (2018–24) for a price in the range of $83,000–$99,600. The gallery also sold two additional works by the artist for prices in the range of $40,000–$48,600 and $35,000–$42,600, respectively.
  • Kibong Rhee’s Noneplace landmark (2025), Empty code 0 (2025), and TBC (2025), all for prices in the range of $80,000–$96,000 each.
  • Kim Yun Shin’s Waves of Joy 2024–26 (2024) for a price in the range of $70,000–$84,000 and Add Two Add One, Divide Two Divide One 2015–34 (2015) for a price in the range of $30,000–$36,000. The gallery also sold five works with prices within the range of $15,000–$24,000 apiece.
  • Candida Höfer’s Real Gabinete Português de Lieitura Rio de Janiero III (2005) for a price in the range of €64,900–€77,880 ($70,200–$84,200).
  • Two pieces by Jae-Eun Choi, each titled When We First Met (2024), sold for prices in the range of $50,000–$60,000 apiece.
  • Louise Bourgeois’s Eyes (2004) for a price in the range of $48,000–$57,600 and Pink Days (BOUR-13017) (2008) for a price in the range of $22,000–$26,400.
  • Julian Opie’s Dance 5 figure 1 step 1. (2022) for a price in the range of £45,000–£54,000 ($58,200–$69,800).
  • Korakrit Arunanondchai’s Before (2023) for a price in the range of $35,000–$42,000.
  • Jean-Michel Othoniel’s Amant suspendu rouge et rose (2025) for an €35,000–€42,000 ($37,800–$45,500).
  • Haegue Yang’s Staring Floral-Branchia Soul Relief - Mesmerizing Mesh #275 (2025) for a price in the range of €31,000–€37,200 ($33,500–$40,200).
  • Lee Kwang-Ho’s Untitled 4518-1 (2024) for a price in the range of $28,000–$33,600, Untitled 4518-2 (2024) for a price in the range of $19,000–$22,800, and Untitled 4819-10 (2023) for a price in the range of $11,000–$13,200.
  • SUPERFLEX’s Nine Flies Staring At Each Other (2024) for a price in the range of €20,000–€24,000 ($21,600–$25,960).

MASSIMODECARLO’s reported sales were led by Jennifer Guidi’s Seeking Joy (Painted Universe Mandala SF #4E, White Yellow Orange Pink Gradient, Natural Ground (2021), which sold for a price in the range of $500,000–$600,000. Other reported sales included:

  • Carla Accardi’s Incontro di labirinti (1956) for a price in the range of €200,000–€250,000 ($216,000–$270,000).
  • Mimmo Paladino’s Adagio (2023) for a price in the range of €200,000–€250,000 ($216,390–$270,480) and Aurea Aetas 4 (2024) for a price in the range of €50,000–€80,000 ($54,090–$86,550).
  • Jamian Juliano-Villani’s Mother and Child (Special Delivery) (2024) for a price in the range of $100,000–$120,000.
  • Dominique Fung’s Tang Horse (2025) for a price in the range of $80,000–$100,000.
  • Lenz Geerk’s Woman with Seagull (2025) for a price in the range of €40,000–€60,000 ($43,270–$64,910).
  • Bodu Yang’s Mirkwood 2;46 (2025) for a price in the range of $35,000–$40,000.
  • Yeesookyung’s Translated Vase 2020 TVG 14 (2020) for a price in the range of $20,000–$40,000.
  • Xue Ruozhe’s 一棒水A Handful of Water (2025) and 位移 x2 Shift+Shift (2025) for prices in the range of $20,000–$30,000 apiece.
  • Hejum Bä’s Haptic Circuitry II (2024–25) and Iris (The Login Sentience lI) (2024–25) for prices in the range of €20,000–€30,000 ($21,600–$32,450) apiece, and Exit Il (2024–25) for a price in the range of $15,000–$20,000.

Kasmin’s reported sales were led by Ali Banisadr’s Omen (2025), which sold for $475,000. Other reported sales from the gallery included:

  • Mark Ryden’s The Sentinel #177 (2024) for $275,000.
  • Bosco Sodi’s Untitled (2024) for $82,000 and another work for $18,000.
  • Alexis Ralaivao’s La lettre anonyme (2024) for $48,000.
  • Theodora Allen’s Shooting Star VI (Oak) (2025) for $48,000.
  • Lyn Liu’s Book eater (2025) for $24,000 and Acupuncture (2025) for $10,000.
  • Sara Anstis’s Hill (2024) for $15,000.

Tina Kim Gallery’s sales were led by Pacita Abad’s Through the Looking Glass (1996), which sold for $500,000 to a museum in Southeast Asia. This work was part of the gallery’s presentation in Encounters, a section of the fair dedicated to large-scale installations. The gallery’s second-most-expensive reported sale was for Abad’s The Far Side of Apo Island (1989), which sold for a price in the range of $250,000–$500,000. Other reported sales included:

  • Ha Chong-Hyun’s Conjunction 19-89 (2019) for a price in the range of $100,000–$250,000.
  • Pacita Abad’s Twenty-five meters down on Layag-Layag Reef (1986) for a price in the range of $100,000–$250,000.
  • Lee ShinJa’s Joining (1981) for $200,000 and Spirit of Mountain (1996) for a price in the range of $50,000–$100,000.
  • Suki Seokyeong Kang’s Day #23-27 (2021–23) for a price in the range of $25,000–$50,000.
  • Maia Ruth Lee’s B.B. Lattice 1-3 (2025) for a price in the range of $10,000–$25,000.

Lehmann Maupin’s sales were led by a work by Cecilia Vicuña that sold for a price in the range of $350,000–$450,000. The gallery also sold a work by David Salle for $120,000, along with a work by Anna Park—whom the gallery announced representation of this week—for a price in the range of $40,000–$50,000.

Color and Light, 2016
Michelangelo Pistoletto
GALLERIA CONTINUA

Galleria Continua’s reported sales were led by two works from Michelangelo Pistoletto’s “Color and Light” series, each selling for €320,000 ($346,000). Other reported sales from the gallery included:

  • Yoan Capote’s Purificación (ingravidar) (2024) for $130,000 and Isla (Omaggio) (2024) for $90,000.
  • Loris Cecchini’s Aeolian landforms (Etep) (2024) for $80,000.
  • Hans Op De Beeck’s Zhai-Liza (mother’s shoes) (2024) for $70,000.

Berry Campbell Gallery’s sales were led by Lynne Drexler’s Grass Fugue (1966), which sold for $750,000. The gallery also sold Drexler’s Bubbled Pink (1973) for $300,000. Other reported sales included:

  • Yvonne Thomas’s Squares (1965) for $175,000.
  • Alice Baber’s Yellow Croquet Third Wicket (1961) for $95,000, and Return (1962) for $55,000.
  • Elizabeth Osborne’s Lily Pond 3 (1998) for $62,000 and Before the Storm (1997–98) for $38,000.
  • Janice Biala’s Les Deux Jeunes Filles (1951) for $32,000.

Mazzoleni’s reported sales were led by Salvo’s La Valle (2002), which sold for $300,000. The gallery also sold two more paintings by the artist: Sant’Anna (2008) and Primavera (2006) for $100,000 and $75,000, respectively.

Almine Rech’s reported sales were led by a Javier Calleja painting, which sold for a price in the range of €250,000–€270,000 ($270,488–$292,127). Other reported sales included:

  • A drawing by Tom Wesselmann for a price in the range of $180,000–$200,000.
  • Two paintings by Mehdi Ghadyanloo for a price in the range of €80,000–€160,000 ($86,560–$173,110).
  • Two paintings by Oliver Beer for a price in the range of £65,000–£70,000 ($84,000–$90,500).
  • A painting by Minjung Kim for a price in the range of €60,000–€70,000 ($43,270–$75,730).
  • A painting by Youngju Joung for a price in the range of $50,000–$60,000.

One Who Lives In the Dream, 2025
Hayal Pozanti
Jessica Silverman

Two Vases, 2025
Hilary Pecis
Timothy Taylor

Timothy Taylor’s reported sales were led by Annie Morris’s Stack 8, Cobalt Turquoise Dark (2024), which sold for £170,000 ($219,800). Other reported sales included:

  • Hilary Pecis’s Two Vases (2025) for $125,000.
  • Daniel Crews-Chubb’s Immortal XXXV (magenta) (2025) for $95,000, Study of a Figure VII (Immortals) (2024) for $16,000, and Study of a Figure IV (Immortals) (2024) for $12,000.
  • Antonia Showering’s Summoning (2023) for £95,000 ($122,911).
  • Hayal Pozanti’s The Gate to All Mysteries (2025) for $75,000.
  • Paul Anthony Smith’s Dreams Deferred #86 (Marcus Garvey) (2025) for $35,000.

San Francisco dealer Jessica Silverman’s reported sales were led by Clare Rojas’s Sunset (2025), which sold for $110,000. Other sales reported by the gallery included:

  • A 2025 painting by Hayal Pozanti for $75,000.
  • Masako Miki’s Moon Deity Illuminates the Universe (2025) for $45,000 and Benevolent Observer (2025) for $22,000.
  • Rupy C. Tut’s At the Edge of Awake (2025) and Awakened (2025) for $40,000 apiece.
  • Two 2025 paper clay works by Pae White for $25,000 apiece.
  • Two bronze sculptures by Atsushi Kaga for $24,000 apiece, as well as a work on paper and a mixed-media work on paper for $16,000 and $8,000, respectively.
  • Chelsea Ryoko Wong’s After the Storm (2025) for $22,000.
  • Davina Semo’s In Touch (2024) for $18,000.
  • A 2025 painting by Emma Cousin for $18,000.

Seoul’s Hakgojae Gallery reported sales were led by Jiang Heng’s Sick Like a Limpet (2017), which sold for $109,500. Other reported sales included:

  • Song Hyun-sook’s 8 Brushstrokes (2007) for €66,000 ($71,400).
  • Joung Young-Ju’s High Hills Village 203 (2024) for $63,000 and Evenings 122 (2025) for $44,500.
  • Jiang Heng’s I Saw My Shadow In The Dark (2018) for $49,500.
  • Seven works by Yun Suknam for $5,000 apiece.


Additional reported sales from Art Basel Hong Kong 2025

Study for Japanese Art - Hokusai, 2019-2021
Yukinori Yanagi
BLUM

BLUM’s sales were led by Yinkori Yanagi’s Study for Japanese Art - Hokusai (2019–21), which sold for $90,000. Other sales reported included:

Beijing’s Ink Studio reported sales that were led by Bingyi’s The Palatial Gardens and Flowers (2021–23), which sold for $75,000. Other reported sales included:

  • Ren Light Pan’s Sleep Painting – 01.30.22, NY (2022) for $30,000 and Untitled (purple dress) (2024) for $13,000.
  • Tseng Chien-ying’s Aftersun (2023) for $21,500.
  • Kang Chunhui’s Sumeru No. 6 (2022) for $13,000 and Sumeru No.56 9 (2025) for $10,000.
  • Xu Bing’s Book from the Sky, Printed Sheet No. 2 (1987–90) for $9,000.
  • Chen Haiyan’s The Eye (1986) for $600.

Sprüth Magers’s reported sales were led by Hyun-Sook Song’s 6 Brushstrokes over 1 Brushtroke (2025) and 9 Brushstroke I (2023), which sold for €65,000 ($70,326) apiece. The gallery also sold two works by Mire Lee, including Open wound: Skin sculpture studio prototype #7 (2024) and Open wound: Surface with many holes #3 (2024) for €45,000 ($48,680) and €30,000 ($32,450), respectively.


Anat Ebgi, one of Artsy’s best booths from the fair, reported sales led by a painting by Jenny Morgan, which sold for $55,000. Other reported sales included:

  • Four paintings by Alec Egan, each in the price range of $25,000–$40,000.
  • Sarah Lee’s Where Two Nights Meet (2025) for $35,000.
  • Two paintings by Ming Ying for $32,000 apiece.
  • Meeson Pae’s Pulse (2025) and Drift (2025) for prices in the range of $20,000–$34,000 apiece.
  • Caleb Hahne Quintana’s Secrets of the Drowsing Tree (2025) and An Elegy for Lost Children (2025) for prices in the range of $26,000–$34,000 apiece.
  • Gideon Rubin’s Black Kimono (2024) for $30,000.
  • Two paintings by Marc Dennis for $28,000 apiece.

Mai 36 Galerie sold Magnus Plessen’s Doppelportrait Sarah und ich (blau) (2024) for $45,000. Other reported sales included:

Vadehra Art Gallery’s sales were led by Praneet Soi’s Falling Figure (2024–25), which sold for $30,000. Other sales reported by the gallery included:

  • Zaam Arif’s Where does the light fall (2025) for $25,000 and The Light Falls Away (2025) for a price in the range of $10,000–$20,000.
  • Astha Butail’s A Transcendent Scheme (2025) for a price in the range of $10,000–$20,000.
  • Gauri Gill’s Untitled (68) from the series Acts of Appearance (2015–present) for a price in the range of $10,000–$20,000.

Other sales reported by galleries included:

  • Pearl Lam Galleries sold works by artists including Zhu Jinshi, Mr Doodle, Su Xiaobai, and Damian Elwes, within the range of $20,000 to $600,000.
  • Italian gallery P420 reported sales of five works by Irma Blank, led by Trascrizioni Doppelzeitungsseite VII (1975), which sold for $32,000. The other four works sold for prices ranging from $8,500 to $32,000 apiece.
  • Beijing- and Paris-based HdM Gallery—another of Artsy’s best booths at the fair—sold “several” works by Sanyu, including 16 works on paper for $37,710 apiece, one work on paper for $30,100, and four additional works on paper for $24,000 apiece.
  • Taipei-based gallery Yi Yun Art—another of Artsy’s best booths—sold 11 works by Yu Peng for a total of $160,000.
  • BASTIAN sold Joseph Beuys’s Halley’s Comet (1980) for €48,000 ($51,933).


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Friday, March 28, 2025

New MoMA director is Christophe Cherix, replacing Glenn Lowry. https://ift.tt/U5ZGNFl

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) announced on Friday that Christophe Cherix will become its next director, beginning this September. The Swiss curator, who is currently MoMA’s chief curator of drawings and prints, first joined the museum in 2007. He is set to succeed Glenn D. Lowry, who has led the institution since 1995. Lowry will leave MoMA as its longest-serving director to date.

In his tenure at the institution, Cherix has curated landmark exhibitions including “ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN” in 2023, “Adrian Piper: A Synthesis of Institutions” in 2018, and “Yoko Ono: One Woman Show” in 2015. He has also overseen acquisitions of major collections that have expanded MoMA’s holdings significantly.

“Christophe’s brilliant curatorial leadership in modern and contemporary art, deep insight and passion for MoMA’s collection, and reputation for steady stewardship stood out as indispensable qualities to meet the moment as the museum’s next director,” said Marie-Josée Kravis, the chair of MoMA’s board, in a press statement accompanying the announcement.

Born in Switzerland, Cherix studied at the University of Geneva. Prior to joining MoMA, he was a curator at Musée d’art et d’histoire in Geneva. “MoMA has long been a leader in embracing new forms of expression, amplifying the voices of artists from around the globe, and engaging the broadest audiences onsite and online,” he said in a press statement. “As the Museum approaches its centennial, my highest priority is to support its exceptional staff and ensure that their unique ability to navigate the ever-evolving present continues to thrive.”

Since September 2024, when Lowry announced his intention to step down, speculation over the identity of his successor has been widespread in the art world. Thelma Golden, the director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, and Jessica Morgan, director of the Dia Art Foundation, were thought to be among those in contention for the job.

In 2018, Lowry was approved by MoMA’s board to extend his tenure past 2020, when he was previously set to retire, based on a museum policy requiring senior staff to retire at age 65.

“I have been privileged to work with Christophe for more than fifteen years at MoMA, and I am delighted that the board has chosen him to be the next director of the museum. In the months ahead, we will work together to ensure a smooth and successful transition,” Lowry said in a press statement. “Christophe is a gifted and talented curator, and I Iook forward to seeing the Museum evolve and thrive under his able direction.”



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New Yoko Ono biography includes revelations about her life with John Lennon. https://ift.tt/Oop9RDA

Yoko, a new biography by journalist David Sheff, offers the most intimate and detailed portrait to date of Yoko Ono’s life—both before and after the death of her husband, John Lennon. Published by Simon & Schuster, the book, which draws on extensive interviews with Ono, her family, and close collaborators, was released on March 25th.

Ono has a complex legacy as a Conceptual art pioneer, peace activist, and cultural lightning rod. A prominent figure in the Fluxus movement, Ono is presented in the biography as a multifaceted figure whose personal story has often been obscured by the public obsession with her relationship with John Lennon. The book traces her early years in wartime Japan, her struggles with mental health, and her emergence as a leading voice in the avant-garde art world. Sheff, who first interviewed Lennon and Ono in 1980 for Playboy, builds on decades of access, including time spent at the artist’s home.

The biography includes previously unreported details about Ono’s personal life, including the aftermath of Lennon’s assassination in New York in 1980. According to Sheff’s account, Ono’s immediate response to the tragedy was shaped by her concern for their son Sean, then five years old. She asked hospital staff to delay the public announcement of Lennon’s death so she could inform Sean herself before the news reached television.

Cut Piece (1964) performed by Yoko Ono in New Works of Yoko Ono, Carnegie Recital Hall, New York, March 21, 1965, 1964 -1965
Yoko Ono
The Museum of Modern Art

The book also explores Ono’s experience of grief, including the security concerns that followed Lennon’s death. In one instance, Sean was smuggled out of their building in a duffel bag to avoid a potential threat.

Beyond these harrowing moments, Yoko provides insight into the artist’s creative resilience. It details her artistic process, her return to work after personal loss, and the ways she has continued to advocate for peace and experimental art into her nineties. The biography also revisits the contentious public perceptions of her marriage.

Sheff presents a portrait of a woman whose avant-garde practice was often misunderstood, but whose influence is now widely acknowledged across music, visual art, and activism.

That influence was reaffirmed last year with “Yoko Ono: Music Of The Mind,” a major survey show at Tate Modern in London. The exhibition, which will open at Berlin’s Gropius Bau on April 10th, highlights Ono’s activism through participatory and instruction-based works, such as Draw Circle Event (1964–65) and Add Colour (Refugee Boat) (1960/2024).



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How Late Painter Lynne Drexler Became a Color Field Pioneer https://ift.tt/CglcpF6

Twilight Revisited, 1971
Lynne Drexler
White Cube

In 1970, Lynne Drexler’s world suddenly became muted in color when a mental breakdown triggered temporary, psychosomatic color blindness. Yet despite this profound sensory shift, the artist never stopped working. Instead, Drexler sought solace in music, attending operas, like German composer Richard Wagner’s The Ring Cycle, where she sketched her impressions.

Drexler—sketchbook in hand—became a regular at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. There, she refined her lyrical abstract style, marked by complex, textured fields of color. At the same time, her palette adopted a more tonal quality, reflecting her temporary color blindness. These works on paper largely informed her 1970s paintings, including Titan/Titian Remembered (1975), which features rectilinear and curved shapes layered in a rich composition of yellows and mustards. This work is featured on the second floor of White Cube’s second solo exhibition of Drexler’s work, “The Seventies,” showcasing her previously unseen 1970s paintings and works on paper in Hong Kong until May 17th.

Titan/Titian Remembered, 1975
Lynne Drexler
White Cube

“The Seventies” is the latest in a string of events heralding Drexler’s long-overdue recognition, a resurgence that began with the dramatic March 2022 auction of her 1962 painting Flowered Hundred. Its sale, for a whopping $1.29 million at Christie’s New York, brought Drexler—a contemporary of other overlooked women painters Jane Freilicher and Lois Dodd—into sharper focus.

One person who took notice was Sukanya Rajaratnam, White Cube’s global director, who then worked at Mnuchin Gallery. Struck by the kaleidoscopic, textural painting, Rajaratnam partnered with Martha Campbell and Christine Berry of Chelsea’s Berry Campbell Gallery to stage a two-venue exhibition in 2022 titled “The First Decade.” Shortly thereafter, Rajaratnam joined White Cube, securing co-representation for Drexler between the blue-chip gallery and Berry Campbell Gallery in 2023. White Cube then presented its first solo exhibition of Drexler’s work in London last November, focusing on her 1960s period. Now, 25 years after her death, Drexler is receiving long-deserved critical acclaim worldwide.

Early career

A painter since childhood, Drexler never stopped pushing herself. “I could not stop painting, once I got started,” she once said. Born in Newport News, Virginia, in 1928, she began as a self-taught artist, later attending classes at the Richmond Professional Institute and the College of William & Mary. Following two extended trips to Europe in the 1950s, she settled in New York in 1955. There, she studied with Abstract Expressionists Robert Motherwell and Hans Hofmann, whose “push-pull” theory championing contrasting blocks of color shaped her earliest abstract explorations. From then on, distinct fields of color, marked by thick tessellated brushstrokes and rich chromatic interplay, became her primary focus.

In 1961, New York’s famed Tanager Gallery mounted Drexler’s first and only major solo exhibition during her life, featuring a series of her mosaic-like paintings. According to one of Drexler’s journal entries, it caught the attention of artist and dealer of Abstract Expressionists, Betty Parsons. Even so, it was commercially unsuccessful. That same year, she met artist John Hultberg at The Artist’s Club in New York and, after a whirlwind romance, married shortly thereafter. “You want to see a parallel life, like that movie Sliding Doors, where she continues to have solo shows on her own,” Rajaratnam said. “Like, ‘What if?’ But when she marries John, who’s much more successful and much more established, she’s almost his nursemaid at that point. Her career is completely cut short.”

Winter Reflections (Siberian Song), 1975
Lynne Drexler
White Cube

With New York dealer Martha Jackson’s help, Drexler and Hultberg purchased a house on Mohegan Island, Maine, 12 miles offshore, in 1971. While intended as a getaway for the couple, the island primarily served as a refuge for Hultberg to manage his alcohol dependency. Consequently, Drexler largely retreated from the art scene, living between Maine and the Chelsea Hotel in New York, participating in only occasional, minor exhibitions. However, lack of recognition never deterred her.

“I love that she carries on this unique style,” said Berry. “She does not get swayed by the fact that nobody is showing her. She continues, she carries the torch.”

Blupe, 1973
Lynne Drexler
White Cube

Foam, 1971
Lynne Drexler
White Cube

Abstract works of the 1970s

Drexler’s nervous breakdown and color blindness had been exacerbated by her increasingly strained relationship with Hultberg, whose drinking and infidelity placed a heavy burden on the artist. Drexler sought hospitalization in 1970, and immediately resumed painting upon her release. While her 1960s works were often rooted in nature, she now embraced Wassily Kandinsky’s idea that abstraction could be a visual equivalent to music. For instance, the title of Trebled / Tregled Blue (1974), a painting where striated rectangular forms are interspersed with swirling blues, is named after a musical clef.

Works from this period showcases Drexler’s unwavering dedication to her unique visual language, a synthesis of diverse influences. The works have a Post-Impressionist sensibility. For instance, Burst Blossom (1971), hung on the right wall on the first floor, evokes the pointillism of Georges Seurat with its dotted fields of green and orange, distributed alongside thick, swirling paint akin to Vincent van Gogh. Works like Sunshine Divine (1970), with its densely layered geometric brushstrokes, recall the patterned backgrounds of Gustav Klimt paintings, if viewed close-up.

Burst Blossom, 1971
Lynne Drexler
White Cube

Gossomer [sic], 1972
Lynne Drexler
White Cube

These paintings are likely informed by her opera sketchbooks, which are marked by dense, detailed patterning. In Hong Kong, White Cube is showing a suite of 10 untitled wax-crayon-on-paper works, lining the wall along the second-floor desk. “She repeated shapes and colors and compositions over and over and over again,” said Berry, who points to Drexler’s persistent approach. “There’s really a mastery of what she’s doing, so when she gets to the canvas, it’s very thought out.”

Many of the works feature a much more tonal palette than the kaleidoscopic works of the 1960s. One standout example is Redoubled (1975), which features a field of alternating shades of pink and purple. These tessellated forms create complicated, hypnotic color gradients that appear to be collaged together.

Lynne Drexler’s legacy today

Drexler’s burst of pure abstraction came to an end near the 1970s. Instead, she began to integrate these collaged color fields into more representational work, particularly after she finally separated from Hultberg in 1983. She permanently moved to Mohegan Island, where nature’s stark beauty once again seeped into her work. Even when focusing on familiar forms, such as trees or interiors, the echoes of her 1970s tessellated patterns linger. She truly dedicated her life to these representations of color, giving her work a “timeless” quality, according to Rajaratnam.

“What is great about [Drexler’s] work is it harkens back to the late 19th century but also looks forward to the 21st century,” said Rajaratnam. “When you look at her ’80s and ’90s work, where she moves back into figuration, those still-life paintings, you can juxtapose that with a Matthew Wong, and it would look very much at home. It’s timeless. She can move between movements.…She constantly reinvented herself.”

The full story is still unfolding. The gallerists from White Cube and Berry Campbell are committed to showcasing the complete scope of Drexler’s life and work, from her earliest explorations of abstractions in the ’60s to the mind-bending color fields of the ’70s and, eventually, to the polychromatic worlds that characterized her later life. “Lynne Drexler was painting her entire life,” said Berry. “She painted from day one until the day she died, and there are amazing paintings from all decades of her life.”



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Thursday, March 27, 2025

Arpita Singh’s Visionary Paintings Are Finally Gaining International Recognition https://ift.tt/JTDZ3Sj

Several women appear in Arpita Singh’s 1989 painting Munna apa’s garden. One, middle-aged, waters her flowers, while another on the right watches on through floral curtains. Through a window in the center-top of the painting, a woman appears bare-chested. These figures, windows, and flowers appear in canvases throughout Singh’s career. “I always paint the things I see and experience every day,” the artist said in an interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries, for the show’s catalogue. “They’re almost the same every day.”

“Remembering,” at the Serpentine North, is Arpita Singh’s first institutional solo exhibition outside India. The exhibition surveys a 60-year career with an emphasis on Singh’s unique approach to figuration and world-building. While Singh is one of the best-known painters in India, international recognition has been slower to arrive. The Serpentine show comes on the heels of important recent shows of Indian art in the U.K., such as the widely praised 2024 exhibition “Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975-1998” at the Barbican Centre, which showed works by Singh in the context of close Indian peers and collaborators such as Nilima Sheikh, Nalini Malani, and Madhvi Parekh.

In this new solo show, the singularity of Singh’s career comes into focus. With a total commitment to finding a language for her personal life, she uniquely reinterprets Indian folk and modernist traditions alongside Western Surrealism, inspiring, as Obrist said in an interview with Artsy, “five generations of Indian contemporary artists.”

Singh’s large oil paintings, in which figures navigate their domestic, urban, and political everyday realities, hang along the perimeter of the Serpentine gallery, following the artist’s practice chronologically. Two inner chambers in the exhibition house more intimate works in watercolor and ink, including early abstract drawings, etchings, and a set of 12 zodiac-inspired works—hints of the spiritual and mythical dimensions that guide the artist’s sense of her “everyday.”

In place of traditional interpretive texts, personal reflections—including contributions from curators, critics, longstanding friends of the artist such as Sheikh, and authors such as Devika Singh, Geeta Kapoor, and Geetanjali Shree—accompany the works, providing a sense of interpersonal context for Singh’s life.


Singh’s maplike paintings

Singh’s oeuvre, Obrist explained, takes the form of an atlas. “There is something to see in every centimeter. She pastes together a world,” he said. Singh’s dense, pictorial planes are often flat, with figures arranged in a space without gravity. This technique is similar to South Asian miniature painting traditions—an important inspiration for Singh.

This “bird’s-eye view” approach also recalls the visual language of maps. In My Lollipop City: Gemini Rising (2005), figures resembling bureaucrats stand on a political map of New Delhi, complete with the city’s road names, landmarks, and monuments. The top of the painting shows a sky with crisscrossing planes, annotated with the names of constellations. Here, Singh systematically builds her personal world, where there may not be gravity but, she told Obrist, there is still “a law, but a law according to me.” Her laws aren’t too rigid, however: As Singh notes in the bottom-right corner of the work, “THE MAP IS FAULTY DO NOT FOLLOW IT.”

Other works are also filled with cartographic references. In one of the artist’s best known works, My Mother (1993), a road runs diagonally across the canvas, separating neighboring territories. Cars, bicycles, chairs, soldiers, women in bikinis, and crosses crowd one section, while the other is filled with a half-length portrait of her solid, scowling mother.

Singh’s reference to the map and its sometimes noisy motifs nod to the geopolitical currents that set the stage for her painterly world. The artist was born in West Bengal in 1937, and saw India through its independence and violent partition from Pakistan in 1947, then a state of emergency in 1975, and its economic liberalization through the 1990s. Contemporary political tensions are a constant part of her life, even if they do not confine her practice. In a 2024 interview with Tamsin Hong, curator of the Serpentine exhibition, Singh said, “I read the newspaper…everyday.”


Indian artists in the world

Singh went to art school on the advice of her high school principal, without even realizing it was a field of study at the time. After graduating with a diploma in fine arts from Delhi Polytechnic in 1959, Singh went on to work as a textile designer at the Weaver’s Service Centre, a postcolonial institution that appears in the biographies of many of India’s most important artists, including Prabhakar Barwe and Monika Correa. By the time Singh began living and working in New Delhi as a painter, she had already encountered many of her lifelong inspirations—Bengali poetry, Western Surrealist art, and Indian narrative folk traditions such as pattachitra and kantha embroidery.

The first conversations for “Remembering” began in the artist’s studio in New Delhi more than 15 years ago, when Obrist first met Singh while researching the Serpentine’s survey of Indian art, “Indian Highway.” The 2008 exhibition was called an “unprecedented spectacle” by The Guardian for its role in introducing many in the U.K. to Indian modern masters, such as M.F. Husain, and those who have since exploded in the international scene, such as Shilpa Gupta.

The market for Indian modern and contemporary art seems to have grown in parallel to institutional attention, with galleries, art fairs, and auction houses reporting consistent success and expansion over the past few years. The same week “Remembering” opened in London, Sotheby’s New York made record sales for a number of Indian modern and contemporary artists. Meanwhile, Christie’s recorded the top auction price ever paid for an Indian modern artist, selling a large, 13-panel M.F. Husain painting for $13.75 million (including fees).

“Galleries, collectors, curators, and institutions have all been working hard and collaborating to bolster the Indian art scene and this has paid off,” said Roshini Vadehra, Singh’s New Delhi gallerist and key collaborator for “Remembering.” Vadehra is a member of this robustly international South Asian art world, and her roster has been on view in London through presentations at No. 9 Cork Street and in institutional exhibitions such as “The Imaginary Institution of India” at the Barbican and the upcoming “A Story of South Asian Art: Mrinalini Mukherjee and Her Circle” at the Royal Academy of Arts.

“Many Indian artists bring something unique,” she said, noting the rising popularity of Indian art internationally. She put this down to “a blend of historical traditions and contemporary relevance that speaks to global concerns: identity, politics, gender, and social transformation, for example.”


Arpita Singh’s feminine figures

An ambiguous feminine figure is often the protagonist of Singh’s paintings. Sometimes, she stands in for a real woman. For example, in her interview with Hong for the exhibition, Singh recounted her mother greeting her nephew at the door in exactly the same manner as the figure in My Mother.

Elsewhere, feminine figures stand in for women more generally. Devi Pistol Wali (1990) reimagines Kali, the Hindu goddess of vengeance and destruction, as an unassuming, contemporary Indian woman in widow’s whites standing atop a prostrate man. Her four hands hold, respectively, a mango, a vase with trailing flowers, the titular pistol, and her own pallu (the part of the sari covering her head). The vehicles common in Singh’s paintings surround her, alongside turtles, more flowers, and other humanoid figures. The symbolic figure of the goddess is replaced with the varied life of a contemporary woman, as told through the mundane objects that surround her, rendered in thick, layered paint.

The mythological woman is invoked in many of Singh’s works. In Searching Sita through Torn Papers, Paper Strips and Labels (2015), the figure of Sita, an icon of chastity, purity, and martyrdom in the Hindu epic the Ramayana, is only present in the title of the work and appears to have disappeared from the canvas. Words such as “MISSING,” “TRAPPED,” and “SLANDERED” take her place, painted to seem as if collaged from newspaper clippings. The work marks Singh’s engagement with rising concerns for violence against women in India at the time. As the individual meaningful words are subsumed in a dense roar of letters across the canvas, Searching Sita hints at Singh’s conception of her work as a quest, seeking something elusive.

“Painting is always fascinating,” said Singh, when asked why she keeps at it. “I saw a very small child make a painting with red, and she was painting the red colour again and again. I said, ‘Why are you doing it again and again?’ She said, ‘It’s not red enough.’ It’s like that for me too.”



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6 Iconic David Hockney Artworks in His Major Paris Show https://ift.tt/vhgXMEU

Rounding the entrance to the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris’s 16th arrondissement, there is a string of neon pink text affixed to the bu...

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