There's lots to see at Fine Art Asia 2016!
Works from the Hong Kong Sculpture Biennial 2016
are on view at Fine Art Asia
Would you mistake these works of art for actual furniture? ;b
I may be a film fan but I'm also a lover of art. Consequently, it irritated me that the Hong Kong edition of Art Basel this year took place when the Hong Kong International Film Festival
was also on and resulted in my effectively having to choose between the
two mega cultural events. And it's with no small amount of relief that
I've discovered that there won't be a similar date clash in 2017; since
next year's Art Basel has been scheduled to take place between March
23rd to 25th while the 2017 edition of the Hong Kong International Film Festival will run from April 11th to 25th.
Missing
out on Art Basel this year also made me doubly determined to check out
this year's Fine Art Asia. And while some may scoff on account of this
art fair -- which also takes place at the Hong Kong Convention and
Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai -- being less prestigious and quite a bit
smaller in size than Hong Kong's premier fine art event, I've had good
enough experiences at previous editions of Fine Art Asia (including last year's) to consider it worth spending a few hours at.
As at Fine Art Asia 2015, I found the antique art works at the Ateliers A. Brugier
booth to be particularly eye-catching; with the large lacquer screens
from China and Japan being the kind of items that I actually think
should be in museums for people to admire rather than displayed just in
private homes for the enjoyment of a very lucky few. Other museum
quality objects on sale at this art fair this year included ancient
bronzes from the late Shang (circa 1101-1046 BC) and Western Zhou
(1027-771 BC) dynasties, a wooden Bodhisattva figurine from the Song
dynasty (960-1279), and French Impressionist painter Claude Monet's beautiful Etrerat Needle at Low Tide.
Like
at many conventional art museums, many of the items on exhibit at the
art fair were displayed without much information beyond artist, title
and date -- and sometimes not even that. So I was most appreciative of the exhibitor (New York-based Kaikodo)
which provided a surprising amount of descriptive details for each of
the large Chinese scroll paintings on display in its booth, and also
very much enjoyed the fair's Private Treasures: Experts Share their Personal View special exhibition featuring objects with special meaning for their owners, and their owners' tales of why this was so.
Often
times at art events like these, the contemporary works are overshadowed
by the older ones. At this year's Fine Art Asia though, I was happy to
see works by my favorite contemporary Chinese artist, "Invisible Man" Liu Bolin. In addition, a number of pieces that were part of the World & Heaven special exhibition that's part of the 2016 Hong Kong Sculpture Biennial (as well as Fine Art Asia) left an impression on me.
Chief among these may well be Kevin Fung Lik Yan's Habitation II.
A metal sculpture resembling a tree, with a series of what looks like a
cross between a bird house and human habitats installed at various
levels, it looks to symbolize Hong Kongers' housing dreams; not least
because the bulk of them were clustered at the top of the sculpture
rather than at its base, the way that many Hong Kongers would prefer to
live on high floors of buildings and up on The Peak (rather than the lower floors and levels)!
On
a lighter note: there was a corner of the art fair which displayed some
interesting but also pretty dubious looking "chairs" made completely
out of glass, paper and other impractical materials. A sign near them
inveighed Fine Art Asia attendees to "JUST ADMIRE US & DO NOT
SIT!" I laughed out loud upon seeing it but at the same time, recalled
having seen an attendee pick up an antique figurine at a booth at this
same event and the shocked reaction of the booth attendant upon seeing
him doing this. So I guess that injunction cum warning installed near
those "chairs" probably was actually needed after all! ;S
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