11 Must-See Shows during Art Basel Hong Kong

Hong Kong’s annual art week returns at a crucial moment, when market-watchers are wondering whether the city will retain its dominance within the Asian art market, following a year characterized by market turbulence. The week’s festivities are anchored by Art Basel Hong Kong, now in its 12th edition, which will gather 240 galleries from 42 countries at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre from March 26th to 30th. Concurrently, Art Central will open its 10th edition, spotlighting more than 100 galleries.

Hong Kong boasts a bustling array of galleries, from global heavyweights like Hauser & Wirth and Pace to local favorites such as Pearl Lam Galleries and Alisan Fine Arts. This dynamic selection of blue-chip and homegrown galleries underscores the city’s role as a crucible of artistic activity. This week, the scene is living up to its reputation, with top-tier exhibitions opening across the city.

Here are 11 must-see gallery shows during Art Basel Hong Kong.

White Cube

Mar. 26–May 17

In the early 1970s, Lynne Drexler experienced a severe mental breakdown, triggering psychosomatic color blindness. As she recovered, she found refuge at the Metropolitan Opera, sitting and sketching as she listened to the performances. Despite her temporary visual impairment, she translated these lyrical sketches into large-scale abstract paintings. As a result of her altered perception of color, she worked with more restricted color palettes than those that defined her vibrant, polychromatic works from the 1960s. These works from the ’70s, never before shown, will be on display at White Cube Hong Kong in “The Seventies,” Drexler’s first solo exhibition in Asia.

Drexler’s art from this decade employed a bold abstract language defined by swatch-like strokes that danced across the canvas. Foam (1971), for instance, features a complex arrangement of swirling patterns in shades of green and blue, interspersed with touches of yellow and orange. Drexler’s technique was profoundly shaped by Wassily Kandinsky’s notion of visual abstraction as akin to musical composition, while also channeling the emotional intensity of Vincent van Gogh’s Impressionist swirls.

White Cube will also feature one earlier painting, Erratic Water (1963), in its booth at Art Basel Hong Kong.

Pearl Lam Galleries

Mar. 26–May 15

Chinese artist Su Xiaobai feels a perennial sense of displacement. “I have no hometown, but I embrace it,” Su said in a press statement for his upcoming solo show at Pearl Lam Galleries, “Niao Niao.” Niao means “being adrift,” a concept mirrored in both Su’s personal life (he lives between Düsseldorf and Shanghai) and the abstract, resin-based works that make up the show.

After returning to China from Germany in 2003, Su became inspired by the curved roof tiles of traditional Fujian houses, a motif that has since become central to his work. To create his tile-like paintings, Su uses lacquer, a varnish employed in Chinese decorative objects since the fifth millennium BCE. Su mixes the substance with various powders and solvents so that, as the lacquer dries, it forms a crystalline surface reminiscent of ceramic glaze. This technique produces unpredictable variations, diminishing Su’s control of the final product. The indeterminacy of the outcome parallels the indeterminate state of existing between geographies.

10 Chancery Lane Gallery

Mar. 22–May 16

Prince Myshkin, the protagonist of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot, famously declared that “beauty will save the world,” suggesting that life’s joys can serve as a defense against suffering. In a time when the news is dominated by disasters and global conflict, 10 Chancery Lane Gallery draws upon this idea for its new group exhibition. Curated by Singaporean curator Iola Lenzi, “Beauty Will Save the World” features eight Southeast Asian artists who engage with themes of incarceration, war, abuses of power, displacement, and environmental destruction.

For the exhibition, Indonesian artist FX Harsono is restaging his 2016 installation The Light of Spirit, in which electric plastic candles and LED bulbs are positioned above a cast cement slab inscribed with the names of Indonesians of Chinese descent who were massacred in Java from 1947 to 1949. The poignant piece serves as a meditation on memory, loss, and the transcendence of the human spirit beyond death. Meanwhile, Filipina artist Josephine Turalba investigates violence and consumption through a series of sandal sculptures made from bullet casings, including Marikina (2013).

The exhibition also features standout work by two late Vietnamese artists that examines the relationship between real-life horrors and Hollywood’s dramatization of history. Vũ Dân Tân’s Money (Hong Kong dollars) (1997),part of a satirical series featuring facsimiles of paper currency with silhouettes of film legend Charlie Chaplin, critiques globalization and consumerism. Elsewhere, Vietnamese American artist Dinh Q. Lê’s “photo-weavings” interlace documentary photographs of conflict-era Vietnam with stills from American-made Vietnam War films to interrogate the sensationalization of real-life suffering.

Double Q Gallery

Through Apr. 26

Hungarian painter József Csató treats everyday plants and objects as characters in his whimsical landscapes. His colorful, fantastical paintings often feature anthropomorphized plants that dance, smile, and squirm with playful energy. “Humour plays an incredibly important role in my life and thus spills over into my work, sometimes through titles or through laughable figures or forms,” Csató told Floorr Magazine. At Double Q Gallery, a selection of these paintings is on view in “Behind the Curtain, A New Landscape Again.”

The titular painting features a group of organic forms and bulging vases onstage, framed by a curtain as if appearing in a theatrical performance. Csató’s technique enhances the dimensionality of his work: He builds up and scrapes away layers of oil and acrylic, creating collage-like compositions. In Long Minutes of Courtesy (2025), his characters pop against a graphic red, white, and black background, appearing almost as if they were pasted onto its surface.

Living and working in Budapest, Csató graduated from the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in 2006. Since then, he has presented solo exhibitions with Galerie Krinzinger in Vienna, Semiose Gallery in Paris, and PLUS-ONE Projects in Antwerp.

Chinese artist Wu Jiaru is inviting collectors to destroy her large-scale painting docile_body_l_ii (2024). Featured in her exhibition “Apollo Center” at Flowers, the work is composed of frenetic, gestural lines in orange, green, blue, and purple, layered with charcoal sketches of human faces. Collectors will be able to select a section of the painting, which will then be cut out and framed upon purchase. By having her work torn apart, Wu invites visitors to participate in a broader critique of artistic ownership.

Wu creates her paintings through a process of automatic drawing, taking inspiration from a diverse range of influences, including Francis Bacon, Greek mythology, celebrities, and consumer culture. Her latest exhibition at Flowers presents new works from her ongoing “docile body” series. These paintings burst with bright colors and haphazard images, inspired by the spirit of rebellion against the status quo.

Since earning her master’s degree at the University of Hong Kong in 2017, Wu has presented two solo exhibitions with Flowers in New York and Hong Kong.

Woaw with Mai 36 Galerie and Kaleidoscope Magazine

Mar. 25–Apr. 18

Best known for his nightmarish designs in the 1979 sci-fi blockbuster Alien, Swiss artist H. R. Giger is the subject of a rare solo exhibition at Woaw, presented by Zürich’s Mai 36 Galerie and Kaleidoscope Magazine. The show, curated by Kaleidoscope’s creative director Alessio Ascari, marks the first solo exhibition of Giger’s work in Hong Kong and showcases his signature aesthetic, which fuses the human and the machine into eerie hybrids.

A highlight of the exhibition is a pair of original doors from the infamous but short-lived Giger Bar in Tokyo—a fully immersive space the artist designed in 1989, featuring custom walls, ceilings, and furniture. Also on display is one of Giger’s Harkonnen chairs, a sculptural piece inspired by his concept work for an unrealized movie adaptation of Frank Herbet’s Dune. Additionally, the show will feature one of the artist’s early works, Biomechanoid 100 (1969), a silkscreened image of intertwined mechanical and organic forms.

Alisan Fine Arts

Mar. 24–Jun. 14

The artist collective Fifth Moon Group in Taiwan and the New Ink Movement in Hong Kong pushed traditional Chinese ink painting into abstraction in the 1950s. In the decades following, New York–based artist Chao Chung-hsiang and others integrated American Abstract Expressionist influences with classical Chinese subjects—flowers, fish, birds, and cosmic elements—in gestural ink and acrylic paintings. “Tradition Transformed” at Alisan Fine Art traces more than seven decades of reinvention in Chinese ink painting through the work of 18 artists spanning three generations, whose uses of the medium range from calligraphic experimentation to contemporary abstraction.

One standout example is the work of Irene Chou, a student of New Ink Movement founder Lui Shou-Kwan. Chou’s gestural Chinese ink paintings were created using Zen- and Tao-derived techniques. In the exhibition, her work Untitled (ca. 1980s) presents a sweeping form emerging from a dark, atmospheric background, seemingly drawn by a luminous orb. “Tradition Transformed” also features Xu Lei, whose Moving Water in Spring (2023) reinterprets gongbi—a precise, realist painting technique. Wang Tiande’s Fishermen by the Lake and Mountains (2023), meanwhile, incorporates stele rubbings from the Qing dynasty alongside Chinese ink, color, and burn marks on layered rice paper.

“This show highlights the transformative power of ink art, showcasing how each artist brings a unique perspective to their materials—whether through bold abstractions or intricate narratives,” director Daphne King Yao told Artsy.

Hauser & Wirth

Mar. 25–Jun. 21

Louise Bourgeois first conceived of her spindly metal spiders as tributes to her mother, drawing parallels between the spider’s identity as both predator and protector and the responsibilities of motherhood. “The spider is a repairer. If you bash into the web of a spider, she doesn’t get mad. She weaves and repairs it,” the French American artist once said. Some of the artist’s arachnids embody this role with more tenderness than others, such as her Spider from 2000, which embraces a giant marble ball loosely inspired by an ostrich egg given to the artist. This work is making its debut in Asia for Bourgeois’s solo show “Soft Landscape” at Hauser & Wirth.

“Soft Landscape” showcases the artist’s practice from the 1960s until her death in 2010. The show features several never-before-seen works, including four painted wall reliefs crafted from the interiors of old crates once used to transport her sculptures. Additionally, Mamelles (1991/2005) will be presented for the first time. This bronze fountain comprises several breast-like shapes, from which water spills into a basin. The exhibition will also highlight a selection of the artist’s drawings.

The presentation coincides with the ongoing Asian tour of a major Bourgeois retrospective, which was organized by the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo and will continue at the Fubon Art Museum in Taipei until June 30th.

Overstimulation is at the heart of American artist Sarah Sze’s new mixed-media paintings, featured in a solo exhibition at Gagosian Hong Kong. These works continue Sze’s explorations of new technology and our relationships with images in the digital age. “Images and their authorship are always in flux,” the artist said in a statement. “We build, rebuild, and trade images like never before.”

Sze’s new paintings take elements from her previous paintings, which she obscures with collaged paper, dripping brushstrokes of neon pink paint, and various other materials and methods. Forever Now (2025), for instance, features a base image of a city skyline against a waterfront. Sze has altered the original image by adding snowy mountains that cover the entire right side of the canvas. Streaks of blue, silver, and pink paint cross the canvas and pasted images of a wolf and a bird are superimposed on its surface.

The density of these paintings contrasts with Sze’s “Fracture Image” hanging sculptures, which feature images printed on paper and suspended from the ceiling. Evoking the playfulness and soothing qualities of a baby’s mobile, these works offer a reprieve from the visual assault of the artist’s new paintings.

Emma Webster’s studio was mere minutes away from the Palisades fire that ravaged Los Angeles in January. As the area burned, the artist felt stirred by the pervasive devastation of climate change. During this period, she painted 11 works for her show “Vapors” at Perrotin, reflecting on our collective paralysis as environmental disaster looms. One of these pieces, The Means That Make (2025), features an ominous cloud looming in the distance, its vast, swirling forms casting a shadow over a serene landscape.

Webster brings a contemporary, technologically sophisticated approach to the age-old tradition of landscape painting. She often constructs her worlds using wax and plaster that she 3D scans and incorporates into digital dioramas. Using digital tools, she enhances these dioramas and projects them onto canvas. The resulting images are characterized by their phantasmagoric allure and painterly precision.

MASSIMODECARLO

Mar. 24–May 16