While the global art market appears to be suffering general malaise amid complex geopolitical conflicts, inflation, and high interest rates, Asia seems to be on a markedly different track.
Last year saw a 14 percent year-on-year decline in sales across mainland China and Hong Kong, according to the most recent Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report. Though sales in the region were still 13 percent above 2020 at $11.2 billion, it was the second lowest total since 2009 and the report found that auction sales dipped in Japan, South Korea, and other smaller markets internationally in 2022.
Given that, it was altogether surprising when market indicators this year revealed a wholly different shift for the wildly diverse Asia region.
In November, the 2023 Survey of Global Collection by Art Basel and UBS reported that, in the first half of this year, collectors from mainland China had the highest median expenditure of all collectors, at $241,000. That figure was a sharp increase over the previous two years. Meanwhile, in Southeast Asia, Indonesia’s homegrown art fair Art Jakarta rolled out a well-attended edition at its new venue and time slot from November 17 to 19, while Art Fair Philippines returned for its tenth edition in February with 63 exhibitors, an increase from 46 last year. The country’s leading gallery, SILVERLENS, expanded with an outpost in New York last July.
It is safe to say that the regional art market has been buoyed by a sense of confidence, hunger for disruption, and deep pockets. It was exactly this atmosphere in 2021 that allowed NFTs and related technologies to become so popular in various parts of Asia beginning, with young tech entrepreneurs making their first forays into the art market, changing the very ethos of buying art in the region, for better or worse.
While techno-optimism remains especially prevalent in major capitals like Seoul, Hong Kong, and Singapore, such a mindset tends to engender wilful ignorance towards the various pressures floating in the background, such as growing censorship and social inequities, geopolitical conflicts, and the looming climate crisis. These issues were clearly showing amidst ambitious efforts to expand or innovate this year.
To that end, here are five major trends that stood out in Asia’s art market and institutional landscape in 2023.
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New Homegrown Art Fairs
Image Credit: Photo Moriya Yuki/Courtesy ACK While much has been made about the launch of international mega art fairs in Asia since the pandemic, ambitious new homegrown fairs have launched as well.
In early November, Define: Seoul, by the organizers of Art Busan, launched in Seongsu-dong, a neighborhood known for its trendy cafes, boutique shops, and popularity on Instagram. The fair was held at three different venues, allowing visitors to immerse themselves in the neighborhood. A week before, young Korean collector JaeMyung Noh announced the launch of his new art fair in Seoul in April 2024, ART OnO, promising low booth fees and experimental works in a bid to disrupt the traditional fair model.
Then, there is Art Collaboration Kyoto, with its novel concept of pairing foreign and local galleries in a uniquely designed booth and exhibition structure. Its most recent edition garnered international buzz. Whether these efforts will pay off remains to be seen.
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Private Chinese Museums Face Challenges
Image Credit: Courtesy Sotheby's Ding Yixiao, once described as a “deep-pocketed, aggressive” Chinese contemporary art collector, founded Xiao Museum of Contemporary Art in China in 2021. In August, the museum was shuttered and Artnet News revealed that he had been banned from doing business with Phillips due to outstanding payments.
Around the same time, Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei, the billionaire founders of Shanghai’s Long Museum, announced that they would be selling 50-60 works for their collection. While the sale, in October, achieved the highest total for any single-owner sale in Asia, the total with fees of $69.5 million was $20 million less than the low estimate of $95.4 million. When the sale was first announced, it was expected to bring in around $150 million. Meanwhile, the star lot, Amedeo Modigliani’s 1919 painting Paulette Jourdain, sold for $34.8 million with premium, hammering at a full $10 million less than its estimate,
These developments beg the question of whether this is the start of increasing challenges for private museums in China.
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Seoul and Singapore Move Beyond the New Fair Hype
Image Credit: Photo Justin Shin/GA/ARTnews via Getty Images The Korea Arts Management Service reported that the country’s auction market in the first half of 2023 was down 9.9 percent from the previous six months and down 44.8% from the first half of 2022, with high-end works impacted, likely because of increased interest rates. Those figures are unsurprising as the frenetic activity and buzz leading up to the launch of Frieze Seoul last year ebbed almost instantly after the inaugural edition ended. A similar phenomenon played out in Singapore with the January 2023 launch of ART SG. Sotheby’s first auction in Singapore, held in August 2022, saw total sales of $17.5 million, while this year’s edition in July only raised $11.1 million.
Nonetheless, Korea remains a solid market with strong international attendance at Frieze Seoul’s sophomore edition, an engaged local collector base, and robust national cultural ambitions. Plans for a new, expansive, multimillion-dollar art storage facility, next to South Korea’s Incheon International Airport, were announced just last month. Singapore’s development as an art market may be impeded, however, by a weak primary market and exorbitant living costs.
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Hong Kong Pulls Through
Image Credit: Maximilíano Durón/ARTnews Since 2019, Hong Kong has seen its art market dampened by political protests as well as lockdowns and travel restrictions due to the pandemic. However, this year, Hong Kong art exports rose nearly 60 percent in the first quarter compared with a year ago, according to the Art Basel UBS global collecting report. Additionally, the city’s growing local scene, the launch of its highly anticipated West Kowloon Cultural District, Hauser & Wirth’s relocation to new premises, and Art Basel Hong Kong’s return to its pre-pandemic size in 2024, provide reasons for optimism.
In an interview with the Japan Times this fall, Pace Gallery CEO Marc Glimcher said he was “pleasantly surprised by the activity level” and “pretty confident about Hong Kong,” adding, “you can’t kill a city like that.” Yet, caution is still warranted as the city’s fall auction sales did not look favorable, with Christie’s four modern and contemporary art sales this November raking in $128 million, slightly lower than the $161 million netted by Sotheby’s five modern and contemporary sales in October, which was considered highly disappointing at the time.
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To Censor or Not to Censor
Image Credit: Courtesy Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong Even as most Asian industry insiders view censorship issues as par for the course in the region, they do tend to impact the local dynamics and global standing of any art scene. Due to the $2 million dollar fine levied at comedian Li Haoshi for his joke referencing the Chinese military, this year’s Beijing Gallery Weekend—the first since the end of pandemic restrictions—saw local galleries reportedly self-censor or censor military imagery.
On the other hand, Hong Kong’s Tai Kwun Contemporary held “Myth Makers—Spectrosynthesis III,” considered to be the first major survey exhibition on LGBTQ+ perspectives in the city. Only one work, Taiwanese artist Shu Lea Cheang’s video series 3x3x6, was removed, due to explicit sexual content, despite concerns of increasing censorship. Then there’s Shanghai-born artist Lu Yang’s work Electromagnetic Brainology! (2017) which was edited at the inaugural edition of ART SG, with two of the key virtual gods portrayed in the work resembling Hindu deities Kali and Shiva notably missing, as the state agency raised questions regarding the suitability of such images for children.