The 10 Best Booths at Art Basel Hong Kong 2024

Amid the glistening neon of Hong Kong’s iconic skyline this week, the M+ Museum façade was alight with an evocative black-and-white film by Yang Fudong—just one of many signs that Art Basel Hong Kong, and a flurry of other art events, had taken over the city.

“For us, the fair already started a few days ago as lots of collectors flew in to visit galleries earlier, which is typical, but it was more intense this time. There was a lot of excitement,” said Mimi Chun, founder of Blindspot Gallery, located in the industrial Wong Chuk Hang neighborhood.

Ahead of the VIP opening on Tuesday, collectors could be found making the rounds at various locations across the city, including the H Queens building, the Pedder Building, and the new Hauser & Wirth gallery, an impressive space nearby in the Central district. Many younger collectors also crowded inside the Fringe Club, a nonprofit art space, where the inaugural edition of a young, alternative art fair called Supper Club took place.

When the doors of Art Basel Hong Kong finally swung open at the harborside Convention Centre, it was immediately evident that the quality of the fair had improved. Returning to its pre-pandemic scale, the 2024 fair hosts 242 exhibitors, marking a 37 percent increase from last year’s edition. Alongside returning gallerists, there were 23 newcomers. Despite the economic downturn in mainland China, several major sales were reported and gallerists were optimistic.

Artsy trawled the fairgrounds to find this year’s top 10 booths.

Booth 1C13

With works by Yoko Daihara, Kazuko Miyamoto, Tsuruko Yamazaki, Shinro Ohtake, and Danh Vo

Japanese galleries like Take Ninagawa had some of the strongest presentations at the fair this year. Upon entering the booth, you are immediately drawn to a cluster of shiny pink paint cans by Tsuruko Yamazaki, a founding member of the Gutai Art Association.

Yamazaki began experimenting with found cans in the mid-1950s, when she stumbled upon food cans used by American troops stationed in Japan, and began glazing them in vibrant varnishes. Also on view are rare enamel paintings from the ’60s by Yamazaki featuring bold geometric patterns inspired by Japanese Pop imagery.

The booth also includes an impressive suite of collages by Shinro Ohtake, who blends Western imagery, found objects, and experiments in photography to capture his experience of life in post-war Japan.

Booth 3D26

With works by Junko Oki

Japanese artist Junko Oki became an artist by accident. Her mother was an embroiderer and left behind a trove of materials for her daughter when she died. Oki was reluctant to touch them, until one day when her daughter cut up a valuable piece of cloth and made a bag from it. Oki, who was working as a designer at the time, was taken aback, but then felt inspired to begin her own textile-based art practice. “It was a moment of realization that something beautiful and new can come out of objects with strong emotional significance,” Oki said. “I realized the creative process can be simple, instinctual, and straight from the heart.”

Paying homage to this story, Kosaku Kanechika’s booth has an installation of a messy pile of embroidery threads spilling over a platform, above which hangs a series of Oki’s intricate works stretched taut in frames. Inside the booth, there are works including bulbous spiral forms embroidered onto found fabrics, such as a worn furoshiki wrapping cloth from the Edo period.

Booth 3C27

With works by El Anatsui, Sopheap Pich, Kimsooja, Jaffa Lam, Bosco Sodi, and Angel Vergara

Axel Vervoordt Gallery’s tightly curated booth focuses on concepts of community and how artists can act as catalysts for positive change. Taking center stage is a monumental red metallic tapestry by Ghanaian artist El Anatsui. He is known for working with assistants who help comb through recycled liquor bottle tops, then flatten and weave the segments of the work, which he unites into a single piece.

Overhead, in a corner of the booth, veteran Hong Kong–based artist Jaffa Lam’s work Egg flower (2024), made of discarded umbrella fabric, forms a glowing yellow canopy. Lam works with women who are former garment factory workers to create her works, which aim to offer a glimmer of hope to local people in increasingly complex times.

Also on view are Cambodian artist Sopheap Pich’s recent experiments in recycled aluminium. Created with an arduous hammering process, his undulating wall reliefs reflect on ideas of resilience and transformation as he grapples with his country’s traumatic past.

Booth 3D23

With works by Jantsankhorol Erdenebayar

Deeply rooted in the harsh terrain of Mongolia’s vast steppes, Mongolian artist Jantsankhorol Erdenebayar’s sculptures are at once resilient and fragile. His works are inspired by old Mongolian riddles and beliefs, as well as contemporary concerns. Many of the sculptures on view fuse human body parts with found animal horns.

Among the most striking pieces is Vigousse iii (2024), an oversized bronze ear with a cluster of horns erupting from the back. The ear is a cast of a plaster sculpture from the Mongolian Academy of Fine Arts, which has been shaped by Russian academic art principles. “The ear is symbolic of the influence of the Soviet regime on the country and the remnants of that time, while the horns symbolize the spirit of the Mongolian people,” the artist explained. “They imply the passing of time as they grow slowly but also have a protective function.”

It’s not often that you see people crowd around an art fair booth staring at an artwork, mesmerized, before breaking out into laughter. Yet this was the case with WAITINGROOM’s solo presentation of Fuyuhiko Takata’s work.

The Tokyo-based artist’s video Cut Suits (2023) shows a series of male models dressed in suits like archetypal salarymen, yet each wields a pair of scissors and starts cutting up each other’s clothing to the soundtrack of a ceremonious Tchaikovsky tune. Eventually, they are left nearly naked and unfettered. Their shredded suits form a large pile at the foot of the screen, alluding to the actors’ freedom from the constraints of corporate masculinity.

Alongside this work, the gallery also presents Butterfly Dream (2022), a hypnotic video that shows butterfly-adorned scissors splicing up a sleeping man’s attire. In the background, we hear sensuous sighs and deep breathing as the camera slows and zooms in on his exposed flesh.

The first thing that catches your eye at Hong Kong–based Empty Gallery’s booth are Jes Fan’s sensuous organic sculptures made of hand-blown glass and carved gypsum. A rising star in the international art scene, Fan is known for taking CT scans of his body and creating printed casts of body parts to create his work.

Another highlight of the booth is Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork’s slick kimono-shaped wall sculpture made of stitched poured silicone, a sound-buffering material. The work functions as a “noise blanket” with the thick textured surface deflecting sound.

Taiwan-based Iranian American artist Raha Raissnia’s monumental oil painting inspired by experimental cinema is also a standout. Painted using the traditional method of grisaille, her ethereal painting appears to almost quiver and vibrate.

A veteran in the local art scene, Grotto Fine Art is one of Hong Kong’s only galleries devoted solely to local artists. “We are telling a Hong Kong story through the booth, and the works reflect the emotional struggle of the people as we digest new changes in the city,” said gallery founder Henry Au-Yeung.

A moody neighborhood scene by Hong Kong–based artist Bouie Choi, who layers thin washes of color onto wood, hangs on a central blue pillar in the booth. In a corner, Wai Pongyu’s A Rhythm of Landscape 9 (2019) is displayed vertically encased in a box. Wai took a sheet of a now-defunct newspaper and used sandpaper to erase the text before scoring several lines of colored ballpoint pen across the surface. “The quickly drawn lines represent the rapidly transforming social landscape in Hong Kong,” said Wai, adding that the marks are also akin to the experience of being inside a very fast car and seeing the environment rush past in a blur.

Dastan’s minimalist booth offers a glimpse into the vast oeuvre of the late artist Mohsen Vaziri Moghaddam, who was a pioneering figure in Iranian abstraction. All of the works on view were created in 2016, when the artist’s eyesight was waning and he wasn’t able to precisely control tools. “Instead, he used his body to create action paintings on the floor. That’s why the size is so much larger and the movements are more full,” said gallery director Hormoz Hematian of the monumental works on view.

Moghaddam’s spontaneous process begins with layering paint, then applying glue and sand and pulling his fingers across the surface to create gestural marks. “A lot of his inspiration is rhythm and joy,” Hematian added. The pièce de résistance of the booth is a nearly 20-foot-long sand painting in vibrant blue-green and pale pink hues, layered with dramatic black marks.

Shanghai-based gallery BANK divided its booth into two sections—the past and the future—to encapsulate its multigenerational program. At the heart of its presentation are historic fiber artworks by Bulgarian artist Maryn Varbanov and his wife and collaborator Song Huai-Kuei, better known as Madame Song. A series of brown totemic forms by Varbanov made of felted dyed lamb wool and goat wool are paired with Song’s impressive woven goat wool and sisal wall reliefs from the 1970s.

These works are presented in dialogue with more recent pieces by Varbanov’s student Shi Hui, who was among the first Chinese artists to engage in contemporary fiber art in the 1980s. Alongside her large etching and embroidery drawings is a raw sculpture Shi made by pressing paper pulp onto an armature resembling an ancient pot.