Booth｜3E07
Venue｜Convention & Exhibition Centre (1 Harbour Road, Wan Chai, Hong Kong, China)
Participating Artists｜Su Xiaobai, Yang Mao-Lin, Ava Hsueh, Yuan Hui-Li, Sopheap Pich, Peng Wei, Su Meng-Hung
VIP Days (by invitation only)｜
First Choice｜03.26 (Wed.) 12:00-8:00 p.m.
First Choice and Preview｜03.26 (Wed.) 3:00-8:00 p.m.
03.27 (Thur.) 12:00-4:00 p.m.
03.28 (Fri.) 12:00-2:00 p.m.
03.29 (Sat.) 12:00-2:00 p.m.
03.30 (Sun.) 11:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m.
Vernissage｜03.27 (Thur.) 4:00-8:00 p.m.
Public Days｜03.28 (Fri.) 2:00-8:00 p.m.
03.29 (Sat.) 2:00-8:00 p.m.
03.30 (Sun.) 12:00 -6:00 p.m.
For the 2025 edition of Art Basel Hong Kong, Tina Keng Gallery is pleased to present works by Su Xiaobai, Yang Mao-Lin, Ava Hsueh, Yuan Hui-Li, Sopheap Pich, Peng Wei, and Su Meng-Hung. Highlighting the singular artistic visions of seven artists who refine the philosophical underpinnings of Asian aesthetics, this presentation translates their dismantling of cultural symbols within Eastern aesthetics into incisive critiques. These reflections serve as new pathways for examining regional aesthetics, identity politics, consumer culture, and belief systems. The Asian contemporary art paradigm shaped by Tina Keng Gallery integrates Eastern aesthetic with contemporary creative thought, offering viewers from varied cultural backgrounds a layered comprehension of their convergence.
Working with Chinese lacquer, Su Xiaobai conjures abstraction through the age-old medium, bridging a cross-cultural dialogue. Experienced as a mirror of time, the administration of texture and materiality in his painting educes a sculpturesque serenity in a fortuitous resonance with the wabi-sabi philosophy — namely a worldview centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. His employment of lacquer infuses a contemporaneity into a traditional medium rich with history, transmitting a subtle visual warmth in a painterly practice characterized by light and shadow. The artist paints layers of vibrantly colored lacquer in a purely structural and balanced composition. The seemingly arbitrary, yet meticulously deliberate handling of visual forms reveals the artist’s pursuit of aesthetic depth.
Yang Mao-Lin works across diverse mediums from painting, computer animation, installation, to sculpture. Through the juxtaposition of multiple historical space-times, the artist explores Taiwan’s unique cultural phenomenon that derives from colonial hybridization, ingrained with a peculiar vibrancy. In an open-minded, humorous, and insightful way, he reflects upon Taiwan’s cultural identity that goes readily unnoticed. Since 2002, the artist’s practice has revolved around the imagery of popular fictional characters that live in the public’s collective childhood memory, which he connects with the traditions and hierarchy of Taiwanese Buddhism, thereby synthesizing common cultural emblems and the consecrated spiritual figures in human civilization. Yang deifies canonical figures from cartoons and comics from his childhood — such as Peter Pan, Astro Boy, Tetsujin 28-go, Boss Robot, and characters from Star Wars — by inserting them into a Buddhist ranking system. Through this approach, the artist has crafted a novel interpretation of personal faith, blending belief systems from various eras, and his combination of solemnity and wit brings together divergent traditions.
In dexterous biomorphic and geometric abstractions, Ava Hsueh creates a hybrid reality that corresponds to epochal shifts in contemporary abstract art. The artist’s dynamic brushwork imparts to her canvases an Eastern allure. The black contours not only exemplify the captivating quality of calligraphy, but also form a sort of natural landscape. What lies behind the dimension of imagery are the visible and invisible depths of temporal and spatial fields, achieved through her interweaving of lines and planes that cradle the pigments’ luster and warmth. Through her layered compositions, the charm of East and West blends with gradual expansion of aesthetics and consciousness.
With her solid classical training, Yuan Hui-Li goes beyond traditional ink painting and calligraphy, integrating ancient and modern approaches in her use of media. Ink art expands under her brush from purely visual into a new realm of synesthesia, where smell, hearing, touch, and the spirit coalesce. The “Fiery Ink” series on view this time addresses contemporary ecological concerns. The misty, cloud-wreathed mountains and forests in traditional ink painting give way to the embers of wildfires, not only reflecting the physical toll of smog, but aligning with the deep repercussions of natural disasters today.
For Sopheap Pich, the connection to nature serves as his inspiration. The Cambodian native employs locally sourced materials, such as bamboo, rattan, burlap, mineral pigments, and metal, to create abstract geometric forms, suffused with a warm moistness reminiscent of the tropical forest, and an essence of nature, lived experience, and creation.
One of the prominent artists in China, Peng Wei is known for her ability to conjure a spirit of centuries-old tradition through a contemporary visual vocabulary, comprising intricate brushwork and subdued palette, rendered on flax and rice paper. Engaged in a dialectic of gender and Chinese literature, she examines her own culture while pondering femininity and her role in today’s China. For the works presented this time, Peng Wei transforms personal memories into layered spaces and objects. In her latest “Crown” series, she replaces human figures with various garments and headpieces as her subjects. The symbols of power and identity — hats, palatial architecture, mythical beasts — are quietly unraveled through her particular gaze, opening up to a fluid narrative of imagination.
Working across painting, silk-screening, installation, and sculpture, Su Meng-Hung transforms traditional flora and fauna painting into cultural symbolism with a sensorial dimension, where appropriation and sampling ceases to be mere satirizing and popularizing of social codes, and become, instead, a direct reference to the taste of the literati and aristocracy. The folding screens on display illustrate how visual codes inform our perception of power structure, integrating aesthetic appeal with cultural observation.
