9 Standout Artworks at Art Basel Hong Kong
From Philip Guston’s large-scale figurative painting of disembodied feet standing on a worn rug against a stark red landscape to Mark Manders’s sublime sculptural head that conveys a sense of stillness and suspended time
Returning to the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre from March 27–29, Art Basel Hong Kong 2026 features 240 galleries from 41 countries and territories, with more than half of the participating galleries operating spaces across the Asia Pacific. With programs unfolding across multiple locations in the city, the art fair continues to connect regional artistic practices with international audiences, reinforcing Hong Kong’s role as a major global art hub.
“The 2026 edition of Art Basel Hong Kong is a celebration of the city’s status as Asia’s cultural hub. Hong Kong’s unique strengths—its tax-free status, free-port heritage, logistical ease, multilingual accessibility, and unrivaled connectivity—continue to underpin its position as a gateway to the region’s rich cultural diversity and dynamic art market,” Angelle Siyang-Le, Director of Art Basel Hong Kong, shared. “Art Basel Hong Kong is more than an art fair—it is a living ecosystem where creativity and culture drive a vibrant, resilient art market.”
From Philip Guston’s large-scale figurative painting of disembodied feet standing on a worn rug against a stark red landscape at Hauser & Wirth, to pioneering Dansaekhwa artist Ha Chong-Hyun’s abstract works that emphasize the physical qualities of his materials rather than depicting images, displayed across three major galleries, and Mark Manders’s sublime sculptural head that conveys a sense of stillness and suspended time, these are the standout artworks at this year’s fair.
1. Philip Guston | Hauser & Wirth
Over a 50-year career from the 1930s to the 1980s, Philip Guston evolved his style from Social Realism to Abstract Expressionism, and finally to a cartoon-like figuration, establishing himself as one of the most prominent and influential artists of the twentieth century. In a bold move that shocked the New York art scene, he shifted from an impressionistic abstract style to a gritty, figurative approach in the late 1960s. He began depicting everyday objects like shoes, cigarettes, and light bulbs alongside mysterious hooded figures resembling the Ku Klux Klan, asserting that abstract art was deceptive during times of political unrest. Fascinated by the ruins of Roman statues, he created his large painting Feet on Rug, which depicts two disembodied feet standing on a worn, fringed rug against a stark red landscape—symbolic figures in a surreal allegory.
2. Carol Bove | Gagosian
Initially known for her ethereal ink drawings inspired by models from vintage Playboy magazines and curated displays on midcentury-modern shelving featuring natural ephemera and counterculture objects, Carol Bove is now primarily recognized for her signature collage sculptures, which use crushed, folded, and welded industrial steel—such as I-beams and square tubing—to form contorted, elegant shapes. While the current Guggenheim Museum survey celebrating her 25-year career and innovative art transforms the entire Frank Lloyd Wright–designed rotunda with over 100 works from these various bodies of work, Gagosian is exhibiting one of the Brooklyn-based artist’s newest sculptures, Parallel Friction, in the gallery’s presentation at the fair. Utilizing reclaimed scaffolding beams as a pedestal for a crumpled, loop-shaped steel tube finished in vibrant orange automotive paint, her collage sculpture creates a striking contrast between the industrial weight of the beams and a sense of lightness.
3. Beatriz Milhazes | White Cube
One of Brazil’s most acclaimed artists, Beatriz Milhazes, rose to prominence in the 1980s as part of Geração 80, a movement that revitalized the country’s painting style by embracing vibrant colors and storytelling, shifting away from years dominated by conceptual art. Creating densely layered, colorful abstract works that blend high art with popular culture, the Rio de Janeiro-based artist’s paintings and collages combine geometric shapes with organic, swirling forms, while her sculptures often feature flowers and ornaments inspired by the city’s celebrated Carnival. At the fair, her painting Happy Dreams reflects several significant artistic influences. Based on Milhazes’s research of prints and textiles at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, this piece combines Brazilian modernist styles with global influences, including Edo-period printmaking, European and Brazilian folk art, and 1960s/70s Flower Power psychedelia.
4. Christo | Annely Juda Fine Art
Legendary for creating large-scale, temporary environmental installations with his wife and artistic partner, Jeanne-Claude, they gained fame by wrapping iconic landmarks and landscapes in extensive fabric coverings, transforming how people perceive familiar spaces. The couple notably refused all grants, sponsorships, and public funding—funding their multimillion-dollar projects themselves by selling Christo’s preparatory drawings and scale models. Early in his career, before moving to New York in 1964, he repurposed everyday objects and covered them to remove their function, preserving them permanently for posterity. Using plastic, which allowed the contents to stay somewhat visible, and rope, he wrapped shoes, phones, magazines, flowers, bicycles, his son’s stroller, and this shopping cart, aptly titled Packed Supermarket Cart, featured in the Kabinett sector of the fair, as part of the gallery’s curated selection of his early works.
5. Ha Chong-Hyun | Kukje Gallery
A pioneer of Dansaekhwa, the Korean monochrome movement, and one of South Korea’s most influential contemporary artists, Ha Chong-Hyun is best known for revolutionizing painting by highlighting the physical qualities of his materials rather than representing images. Rather than using a brush to paint on the front of a canvas, the Seoul-based artist pushes thick oil paint through the back side of a roughly woven hemp or burlap cloth (inexpensive, common materials). The paint seeps through the weave to the surface, forming distinctive textures, beads, and ridges, which he manipulates with palette knives, wooden spatulas, or his hands to craft abstract patterns. At the fair, new and historic works from his iconic Conjunction series are displayed at three galleries: Almine Rech, Tina Kim Gallery, and Kukje Gallery, with the latter featuring the stunning Post-Conjunction 09-134, alongside works by Anish Kapoor, Haegue Yang, and other prominent artists.
6. Joan Mitchell | David Zwirner
Celebrated internationally for her large-scale, emotionally intense abstract paintings, Joan Mitchell made gestural canvases with bold, sweeping brushstrokes that expressed the feeling of a landscape rather than its precise appearance. One of the few women to achieve both critical and commercial success in the male-dominated Abstract Expressionist movement, she spent the first half of her career immersed in the 1950s New York art scene before moving permanently to France in 1959. Primarily producing large oil paintings on canvas, often across multiple panels, her compositions drew inspiration from memories of nature, especially the Seine River near her home. The gallery’s fair presentation highlights her transformative period from the early 1960s, featuring several historic oil paintings, including this Untitled canvas, from a time when Mitchell’s work was marked by dense, centered forms and vibrant color palettes of deep greens and blues.
7. Grayson Perry | Victoria Miro
An acclaimed British artist and broadcaster known for his ceramic vases and detailed tapestries, Sir Grayson Perry gained recognition in 2003 as the first ceramicist to win the Turner Prize, famously accepting the award while dressed as his female alter-ego, Claire. Intentionally using media traditionally seen as lesser or feminine crafts to challenge artistic hierarchies, his signature vases feature classical forms but are decorated with intricate, sometimes sharp, imagery, including sgraffito, embossing, and photographic transfers. His large woven pieces often incorporate digital technology in both design and weaving, while his drawings and prints feature detailed etchings and woodcuts, including maps that depict psychological and social landscapes rather than physical ones. Knighted in 2023 for services to the arts, Perry is exhibiting a new body of work in the gallery’s booth that was originally created for his 2025 landmark show, “Delusions of Grandeur,” at the Wallace Collection, with The Great Beauty, an oak, brass, and ceramic cabinet, described by the artist as a “shrine to friendship,” serving as the centerpiece of the diverse presentation.
8. Martin Wong | P·P·O·W
A prominent Chinese-American painter and collector, Martin Wong was known for his detailed, realistic portrayals of the urban landscapes in New York’s Lower East Side and Chinatown during the 1980s. Exploring themes of ethnic identity, queer sexuality, and street culture, his works often featured detailed brick walls, tenement buildings, and various writing systems, including sign language symbols, astrological signs, and graffiti tags. A dedicated collector and advocate of graffiti art during a time when it faced significant stigma, he co-founded the Museum of American Graffiti in 1989 and later contributed over 300 pieces to the Museum of the City of New York. The visionary realist’s pop culture painting Untitled (two women), displayed in the gallery’s group exhibition, ironically features two nude Chinese women reflected in mechanical reading glasses, subtly blending commercial packaging art with a sex parlor advertisement.
9. Mark Manders | Xavier Hufkens
Dutch artist Mark Manders, based in Belgium, creates sculptures and installations as part of his ongoing conceptual project called “Self-Portrait as a Building.” Started in 1986, this project isn’t a traditional portrait but an imagined structure where each room and object symbolizes different thoughts, emotions, or aspects of a fictional character named Mark Manders. Described as abandoned projects, his work often seems to have been left behind by its creator, conveying a sense of stillness and suspended time. By making durable materials seem fragile, he often casts large figures and everyday objects in bronze and then overlays them with multiple layers of paint to resemble wet, peeling, or unfired clay. At the fair, his poetic fiction, Bonewhite Clay Head, continues to explore frozen, prehistoric-like moments through a bronze-and-aluminum sculpture of a timeless, fossil-like human form.