"Crazy Rich Asians" star Fiona Xie with Zao Wou-ki’s “Sans titre, entre août et décembre 1958” at Sotheby’s auction in Singapore on Aug 28, 2022.While Hong Kong still remains relatively closed off to visitors due to the city’s stringent quarantine measures, other Asian art hubs are slowly roaring back to life.
“At the moment Jakarta has much more of a regional sensibility whereas Hong Kong is still the centre point of the art market in Asia,” says Indonesian art dealer Jun Tirtadji, whose gallery ROH Projects presented artist Bagus Pandega’s Breathe: Exhale at Art Jakarta. The saleroom was packed with established local collectors and recent transplants to the city, as well as at least 30 buyers from Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and South Korea, according to the auction house.Melis by Willem Gerard Hofker fetched S$2.3 million, double its high estimate, while Singaporean modernist painter Georgette Chen’s Boats and Shophouses was acquired by a Southeast Asian collector for S$2 million.
The sale comes on the heels of a non-selling exhibition held by Sotheby’s in Vietnam in August, part of the auction house’s various endeavours to connect with Southeast Asian clients on their home turf. Earlier in the summer, Phillips held a preview for its spring auctions in Singapore. According to the auction house, total transactions from Southeast Asia in its global 20th-century and contemporary art sales were up 140 per cent in 2021, compared with 2019.
Crockett is particularly optimistic about the growing number of younger second-generation collectors in the region who he has noticed are open to collecting international names from outside the region. This year’s edition was more focused on local and regional gallerists, with only 23 foreign dealers among the total of 62 exhibitors.
Ryotaro Ishigami, director and owner of YOD Gallery in Osaka, Japan, who decided to exhibit for the first time this year, said he was particularly interested in tapping into the burgeoning base of young Southeast Asian collectors. Singapore-based Gajah Gallery sold most of its booth, including Bali-based artist Ashley Bickerton’s rainbow-striped painting Motorcycle , priced at US$240,000, among other works.