On Wednesday, Art Basel Hong Kong, Asia’s largest and most important art fair, opened to VIPs, with around 240 galleries exhibiting at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre—just a shade under last year’s 243 exhibitors. While dealers were in consensus that the energy was high and a wide range of serious collectors from across the region as well as Europe and the US were in attendance, the sales reports appeared to tell a story of two different fairs.
At the blue-chip and mega-galleries, sales were swift, with many works pre-sold or already on hold by the time the figurative starting bell rang at 12 pm. But, in conversations with dealers at around a dozen small- and medium-size galleries, most relayed that they had sold only a few middle-tier or lower-priced works by the end of the day.
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“This is not a first-day fair,” a sales director of a US-based gallery told me, before asking if I might wait to write the sales report until later in the fair, which runs until Sunday.
Still, many dealers said they remained optimistic due to the range of collectors in attendance, the quality of conversations being had, and the sense that, after two years of a soft market, they’ve been here before.
“People are just less urgent to pull the trigger,” Mathieu Borysevicz, the founder and director of Shanghai’s Bank gallery, which just opened an outpost in New York, told ARTnews. “There’s a lot of interest, studying, looking, understanding. I think that’s fair. We’ve been spoiled in previous years, where everything just sold out on the PDFs.”
Early in the day, Borysevicz placed a $25,000 sculpture by Beijing-based artist Zhang Yibei with the Hong Kong museum M+. While he had only made a couple of other sales since, Borysevicz recalled that at last year’s edition of Art Basel Hong Kong, it took “the whole fair and a lot of work” to get into the black.
“Every piece we had to work hard to sell. I’m expecting the same this year,” he said.
Installation view of David Zwirner’s Art Basel Hong Kong booth, showing Yayoi Kusama’s 2013 painting INFINITY-NETS [ORUPX] at center.
Photo KITMIN LEE/Courtesy David Zwirner Gallery
Wendy Xu, White Cube’s managing director for Asia, described a similar phenomenon, if adapted to the blue-chip segment of the market.
Collectors “are more conservative and more selective than previous years,” Xu told ARTnews. “Before, they might buy two or three or four works. Now they just want to buy one and they want to make sure they are buying the best quality work.”
Still, White Cube, which is headquartered in London with spaces in New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and Paris, had a successful day, selling a cast iron sculpture by Antony Gormley, HOIST II (2019), for $645,000 and a Tracey Emin neon for $110,000. Several works by other artists sold in the $50,000–$60,000 range. The highest priced work in the booth, a Georg Baselitz eagle painting, priced at $1.75 million, was still available when ARTnews went to press.
In an email on Wednesday night, Los Angeles dealer Tim Blum, who also operates spaces in New York and Tokyo, described the atmosphere at the fair as “a more deliberate approach to collecting,” though the gallery did report over a dozen sales ranging from $12,000 to $90,000.
“The fair opened today amid some trepidation in the global market, and so there is not a sense of urgency, but rather a more thoughtful approach to collecting artwork,” Blum said.
Go higher up the ladder, though, and the sales environment seems downright sunny. David Zwirner reported the highest price for any work sold at the fair so far, with the 2013 Yayoi Kusama painting INFINITY-NETS [ORUPX] selling for $3.5 million. The gallery reported selling five other works between $220,000 and $400,000, as well as a new large-scale painting by Michaël Borremans for $1.6 million to the Corridor Foundation in Shenzhen, China.
That placement may be one of the positive signals keeping dealers optimistic. Multiple dealers told me that they had sold works to the collector-founders of foundations or private museums from mainland China. That cohort reportedly slowed down acquiring in recent years—amid a sluggish domestic economy, hit hard by a real estate crisis—with a number of such institutions folding.
Vincenzo de Bellis, Art Basel’s global director of fairs and exhibition platforms, confirmed the trend.
“We’ve heard and kept track of some institutional acquisitions already, both locally and in the region,” de Bellis told ARTnews. “The very, very positive news is that we’ve seen the region coming very strongly, including greater China. Anecdotally, I’ve heard over and over from local people that certain collectors are here that were not here last year.”
Alas, no dealer but Zwirner was eager to share which private museum founders they’d been in contact with or which works had been placed with them. Such is the nature of Chinese collectors, who typically shy from publicity by default.
Louise Bourgeois, Cell (Choisy Two), 1995, installed at Hauser & Wirth’s booth at Art Basel Hong Kong 2025.
Courtesy Hauser & Wirth
Also at the top of the market, mega-gallery Hauser & Wirth had a banner day, selling Louise Bourgeois’s bronze sculpture Cove (1998, cast 2010) for $2 million to a private Asian collector. The sale is fresh off a Bourgeois show at the gallery’s Hong Kong space that opened Monday. Hauser & Wirth also reported selling a Christina Quarles painting, Push’m Lil’ Daisies, Make’m Come Up (2020), for $1.35 million; a 2025 untitled Avery Singer painting for $575,000 to a Hong Kong-based collector; Rashid Johnson’s 2024 painting Soul Painting “Comedian” for $550,000 to an Asian collector; a 2021 painting by Shanghai-based artist Zhang Enli for $475,000; and two works by Lee Bul, who just joined its roster, for $260,000 and $275,000 to a European foundation. The gallery has over a half-dozen other sales for works priced between $110,000 and $285,000.
The other jewels of Hauser & Wirth’s presentation—a 1995 Bourgeois sculpture titled Cell (Choisy Two);Barbara Chase-Riboud’s sculpture Matisse’s Back in Twins, Red (1967/2024); and Philip Guston’s Blue Cover (1977)—had yet to sell by close of business Wednesday. (The gallery declined to provide prices for those works.) Hauser & Wirth president Marc Payot told ARTnews that he is “very confident” the gallery will place those pieces in Asia by the end of the fair, with two Asian institutions having already expressed interest in the Bourgeois.
At another mega, Pace, the top works sold were a new Loie Hollowell painting from her “Brain” series for $450,000 and a 1978 Kenneth Noland painting for $175,000. The gallery reported just under a dozen other works sold between $12,000 and $80,000, with one work by London-based Chinese artist Li Hei Di going to a private museum, though the location was not specified. Lehmann Maupin reported 15 works sold, all to Asian collectors, with the highest priced work being a large-scale Cecilia Vicuña for $350,000–$450,000 and a David Salle painting for $120,000.
Early in the afternoon, dealer Thaddaeus Ropac, who operates an eponymous gallery with spaces in Salzburg, London, Paris, Milan, and Seoul, told ARTnews that the gallery had sold multiple major pieces in the opening hours of the fair, including the 2010 Georg Baselitz painting, Luise, Lilo, Franz und Johannes, for $1.3 million; a 2024 Daniel Richter painting for $450,000; a Lee Bul for $190,000; a 2025 Tom Sachs work riffing on Picasso for $160,000; and a Miquel Barceló canvas work for $140,000.
“Everybody was a bit worried,” Ropac told ARTnews. “So we are surprised by how fast pieces sold for us. I didn’t expect this dynamic.”
Photo Marten Elder/Courtesy David Kordanksy Gallery
Mike Homer, a senior director at David Kordansky Gallery, which operates in LA and New York, told ARTnews late on Wednesday that the gallery was close to selling out its booth. The top works sold were a triptych by Jonas Wood for $650,000, a Shara Hughes painting for $450,000–$500,000, a Joel Mesler painting and a Huma Bhabha sculpture for $250,000–$300,000 each, and over a dozen other works ranging from $12,000 to $125,000.
Homer attributed the success, in part, to the deep relationships the gallery has developed in China and Hong Kong since hiring a Asia-based representatives beginning in 2022. “That’s been a game changer for us. Investing in a person on the ground has made all the difference,” he said.
Some galleries, however, were still waiting for that first sale. At Seoul’s Wooson gallery, which was showing a range of Asian artists, including Lee Bae, with prices up to $70,000, executive director Soyong Choi told ARTnews that collectors have come back to look at works two or three times. Choi expects it might take a couple days to close. At Tokyo’s Misako & Rosen, cofounder Jeffrey Rosen told ARTnews that, after a strong year for the gallery, he decided to take a risk and not pre-sell any of the presentation, with prices ranging from $10,000 to $180,000.
“It’s either a flex or hubris. We’re trying to allow the strength of the presentation to dictate the success,” Rosen said. “This year, we’ve had more people talking to us about work in a very serious way than in the past. We’re still working on turning that into something other than a conciliatory act. Which is to say, I’m still working to sell.”
Therein lies the contradiction floating around Art Basel Hong Kong on Wednesday for the tier below the blue-chips: an abundance of optimism and a whole lot of work left to be done to secure a successful fair.