A spirited, diverse audience brought a palpable buzz to the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre as Art Basel Hong Kong 2025 got its VIP day underway on March 26th. The 12th edition of the fair features 240 galleries from 42 countries and includes 23 debuting exhibitors. And if a city’s tentpole art fair reflects the character of its art community, then Hong Kong is witnessing the growth of a young, community-minded collector base.
“Younger generations of buyers [are] coming back from COVID-19, and they are bringing new friends,” Angelle Siyang-Le, director of Art Basel Hong Kong, told Artsy at the fair. “Younger generations are very big on community building, and that is definitely what we’ve been observing. They’re not just collecting on their own; they like to share.”
To cater to this “young vibe,” Art Basel Hong Kong has tailored its programming this year, Siyang-Le explained. This includes everything from the fair’s Artist Night celebration, hosted in collaboration with the city’s Tai Kwun art complex, to a curatorial focus on performances, DJs, and public programming and installations.
At the fair, two key themes were prominent: a strong presence of Western modernists, from Giorgio de Chirico to Salvo, and renewed emphasis on digital art. A notable highlight of the latter is Chinese artist LuYang’s massive installation Doku the Creator (2025), a movie theater space designed to immerse fairgoers in the narrative of the artist’s digital persona. This work is part of the fair’s Encounters section, which features 18 large-scale installations supported by galleries.
“We are seeing more digital art coming back,” Siyang-Le said. “That could be partially because the younger generations are very digital and tech savvy, so artists such as LuYang have a huge following of young collectors. The young collectors love to engage with these new ideas and concepts, as well as with digital art. The definition of digital art is being expanded and further challenges itself.”
Another key thread of the fair is the championing of artists and galleries from the Asia Pacific region. More than half of the galleries at the fair are from Asia Pacific, and its Insights section features 24 galleries presenting solo projects by artists from the region. Additionally, of the 38 Kabinett presentations—dedicated sections of gallery booths featuring curated presentations—21 spotlight Asian Pacific artists.
Art Basel Hong Kong 2025 arrives at a moment of cautiousness for the city and its market. However, as the mood on the VIP day of the fair illustrated, Hong Kong remains a vital nexus for the regional art world.
“March is not only an Art Basel thing anymore,” she said. “If you want to see the greatest art from Asia, [collectors] have definitely marked March to come here, and a lot of the collectors actually tie in a greater Asia trip before or after coming to Art Basel Hong Kong to learn about the different regions of Asia. For us, it’s great that international audiences now have a better understanding of the diversity of this region.”
The VIP day kicked off with a bounty of reported sales, led by a $3.5 million Yayoi Kusama work titled INFINITY-NETS [ORUPX] (2013) sold by David Zwirner (all prices and sales are listed in U.S. dollars). Read our roundup of day one sales from the fair here, and stay tuned for our comprehensive recap of reported sales from the fair on Monday.
Here, we present the 10 best booths from Art Basel Hong Kong 2025.
P·P·O·W
Booth 1B17
With works by Martin Wong, Katharine Kuharic, Daniel Correa Mejía, Joe Houston, Owen Fu, Grace Carney, Harry Gould Harvey IV, Srijon Chowdhury, Elizabeth Glaessner, and Robin F. Williams
In the Kabinett section of P·P·O·W’s booth, a mini retrospective of the late American artist Martin Wong is an immediate highlight. The tightly curated collection features some of Wong’s earliest ceramics experiments, characterized by the artist’s severe gothic style. For instance, the artist’s Untitled (Love Letter Incinerator) (1970), which features three conjoined furnace shapes with the artist’s initials carved into the side, is situated on an exterior corner of the booth. According to co-founder Wendy Olsoff, the ceramics were previously living in Wong’s mother’s garden in San Francisco.
Accompanying these early ceramic works are the artist’s cacti paintings, completed in the final years of his life. Just above the incinerator sculpture, the artist’s Double Lithops (1997–98) depicts two lithops, a succulent plant of southern Africa that often has a pair of thick, shield-like leaves. The prices for Wong’s ceramic works range from $20,000 to $125,000 apiece, with Olsoff noting significant demand from local collectors during the fair’s VIP day.
The New York–based gallery also brought a healthy variety of works from its roster. The wall adjacent to its Kabinett presentation features two of Harry Gould Harvey IV’s wall sculptures. Correspondence Radiator / Correspondence Resonator (Asteraceae) (2025), for example, features recycled wood from the Delano Saw Mill, which frames manipulated xerox prints of open hands. Nearby is Robin F. Williams’s Siri Recharging (2025), an iridescent painting with an anthropomorphized depiction of Apple’s virtual assistant Siri lounging. Prices in the booth range from $16,000 to $225,000.