Kukje Gallery is pleased to announce its participation in the 2023 edition of Art Basel Hong Kong at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (HKCEC) from March 21 to 25, 2023. Widely acknowledged as one of the premier fairs not only in Asia but also across the world, this is the first edition to take place since Hong Kong lifted its mandatory quarantine measures, welcoming a broad global audience for the first time in four years. This highly anticipated, upcoming iteration will feature 177 leading galleries from 32 countries worldwide including Asia, Europe, North and South America, and Africa. Highlighting Art Basel Hong Kong’s commitment to the region, over two-thirds of the exhibitors are either based in, or have spaces within, the Asian continent. This year’s Art Basel Hong Kong also marks the return of all sectors, once again providing the variety of programs with which the fair has been associated since 2013—this includes Galleries, the fair’s main sector featuring leading international galleries; Encounters, dedicated to 14 large-scale works and curated for the sixth time by Alexie Glass-Kantor, Executive Director of Artspace in Sydney and the curator of the Australian pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia; Kabinett, featuring thematic solo presentations; Insights, devoted to works by artists from Asia and the Asia-Pacific region; Discoveries, displaying new works by emerging artists created specifically for the fair; Film, a film program curated by the multimedia artist and producer Li Zhenhua; and Conversations, a talks program on the ever-evolving global art scene organized by the author and editor Stephanie Bailey.

Kukje Gallery has been participating in Art Basel Hong Kong since its inaugural edition in 2013 and has remained steadfast in its commitment to the fair by remaining an active exhibitor throughout the pandemic. This year, the gallery is once again pleased to present a wide-ranging booth featuring both Korean and international modern and contemporary masters. For Galleries, Kukje Gallery will showcase Untitled (c. 1960s), a work on paper by the pioneering abstract expressionist painter Wook-kyung Choi, whose independent spirit and bold experimentation charted new paths in modern and contemporary Korean art history. Choi’s works are currently on view at two important group exhibitions: Sharjah Biennial 15: Thinking Historically in the Present (on view through June 11, 2023) and Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-70 at the Whitechapel Gallery in London (on view through May 7, 2023).

Also on view will be important works by a wide range of Korean modern and contemporary artists including Park Seo-Bo’s Écriture (描法) No. 220510 (2022), part of a new body of work that reinterprets the artist’s iconic series of the same title using ceramic. Made in collaboration with master ceramists and first introduced to the public just last year, this new series serves as a potent reminder that natural landscapes are Park’s primary inspirations, not only as illustrated in his use of color but also with material. In this case soil, a core element of nature which is also the key component of ceramic, points to an inspired new direction for the artist. The selection also includes Ha Chong-Hyun’s Conjunction 22-38 (2022), a powerful new work from the artist’s internationally celebrated technique of bae-ap-bub, his visionary method of pushing paint from the back of the canvas to the front.

The booth will also include Gimhongsok’s Stone Construction-black line (2022) from a new series of sculptures comprised of stones cast in bronze and stacked to form a column. These bronze cast stones are then painted in colors reminiscent of real stones—black, gray, and white—at once mimicking the work’s primary medium (stone) which ends up non-existent in the final product and serving as a reminder of how these works were actually made. Also on view will be Lee Kwang-Ho’s Untitled 4558 (2022) from his series of landscape paintings that depict the Kepler Track wetlands, an indigenous ecology that includes a wide variety of trees, vines, and grass native to the South Island of New Zealand. Towards the end of this year, Kukje Gallery will hold the third solo exhibition of Lee in almost ten years, featuring new paintings characterized by the artist’s distinctive realism. In addition, the booth will highlight Haegue Yang’s new sculptures that engage with the artist’s longstanding inquiry into “domesticity,” including Rotating Reflective Running Black Cross-Handle Faucets – Scaly Circles #6 (2023), a new wall-hanging sculpture that features water hoses and faucets on a mirror plate. As is characteristic of many of her sculptures, the work generates unique visual patterns when manually activated. Earlier this month, Yang opened her first solo exhibition in South America, titled Quasi-Colloquial, at the Pinacoteca de São Paulo (on view through May 28, 2023) in Brazil. The artist’s works are also currently on view at Singapore Biennale 2022 – Natasha (on view through March 19, 2023) and the Kochi-Muziris Biennale – In our Veins Flow Ink and Fire (on view through April 23, 2023). In the coming months, Yang will participate in the group exhibition World Classroom: Contemporary Art Through School Subjects at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, as well two solo exhibitions at S.M.A.K. in Ghent (titled Haegue Yang: Several Reenactments) and the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra (titled Haegue Yang: Changing From From to From). Yang is also looking forward to holding an extensive survey show of her work at the Hayward Gallery in London in fall of 2024, which will then travel to major institutions in Europe. Lastly, the artist was recently announced as one of five finalists for the prestigious Joan Miró Prize, alongside Tala Madani, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Frida Orupabo, and Mika Rottenberg. The final recipient of the prize will be revealed towards the end of May.

These works by some of today's most important Korean artists will be exhibited alongside those by widely recognized international artists including the pioneering American video artist Bill Viola’s Self Portrait, Submerged (2013), a rare self-portrait that depicts the artist lying placidly on a river bed. Water, which is a recurring element throughout Viola’s practice, signals change, transition, birth, and rebirth; an edition of this video is housed in the collection of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and was part of his solo exhibition titled Bill Viola. Electronic Renaissance at the same museum in 2017. Viola is currently the subject of two institutional solo exhibitions: Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey (MARCO) in Mexico (on view through April 2, 2023) and Palazzo Reale in Milan (on view through June 25, 2023). Kukje Gallery’s booth will also highlight the Indian-born, British artist Anish Kapoor’s Lime to Teal (2022) from his iconic series of concave discs. Along with Wook-kyung Choi, Kapoor will open his fourth solo show at Kukje Gallery this coming September to coincide with the second iteration of Frieze Seoul. The booth will also showcase the New York-based, Korean American artist Byron Kim’s B.Q.O. 30 (Mako) (2022) from his new series of paintings that allude to the visceral and immersive sense of water. Minimal yet based on meticulous observation, these tripartite works depict different states of water and play with subtle changes of hue and density. The artist will hold a solo exhibition titled Marine Layer at Kukje Gallery’s Busan space, in which other works of the same series are presented.