How to make the most of Hong Kong’s Art Gallery Night // or, Art Basel Hasn't Even Started Yet and My Legs Are Already Tired

Guys, I did it. I managed to attend 14 opening receptions within 2 hours* at Hong Kong’s Art Gallery Night tonight. And I was handed champagne at almost each one. And my last two stops required me hiking up a mountain (not really but it was uphill and that’s hard as a Midwesterner OK). *(Might I suggest that not every Hong Kong gallery host their event from 6-8pm on the same night?)

Leonardo Drew at Pearl Lam Galleries (no relation).
Hong Kong's Art Gallery Night 2019.

My expert-level (half-kidding… but seriously) route that I recommend to anyone who’d want to see the highest concentration of high quality art within a limited amount a time (and, suffice it to say, the pictured pieces and linked exhibitions are my highlights / picks if you can only view a few):

If you’re taking public transit, exit at the Central MTR station. Arrive a little early and walk into the luxurious Landmark, where there’s always an art installation suspended from the ceiling. Once it’s time, start your gallery-hopping next door at the Pedder Building, which I’ve been visiting every single year I’ve been doing my annual Art Basel Hong Kong trip. Take the elevator to the top floor and work your way down via the stairs. This year’s Hong Kong Art Week / Hong Kong Arts Month, you’ll hit Leonardo Drew at Pearl Lam Galleries (no relation) on the sixth floor; What’s Up/Hong Kong on the fifth; Yeh Shih-Chiang: Edge of Sea and Sky at Hanart TZ Gallery (I always love coming here for Chinese art) and Edwin Wurm at Lehmann Maupin on the fourth; Overheated at Massimo De Carlo, Yoan Capote at Ben Brown Fine Arts, and Heimo Zobernig at Simon Lee Gallery on the third.

Vibing out to music at Yeh Shih-Chiang's Edge of Sea and Sky
at Hanart TZ Gallery. Hong Kong's Art Gallery Night 2019.

Then, walk west on Queen’s Road and go to H Queen’s, which was a new destination last year. Again, take the elevator to the highest floor that has art and work your way down. This year, you’ll hit Zhang Yanzi: Seclusion at Ora-Ora on the seventeenth floor, Louise Bourgeois at Hauser & Wirth on the sixteenth and fifteenth, Mary Course at Pace Gallery on the twelfth, Unlock at Tang Contemporary Art on the tenth, Zhou Yangming: Continuum at Pearl Lam Galleries (yes, they have a second location here) on the ninth, and Miwa Komatsu: Divine Spirit at Whitestone Gallery on the eighth and seventh.

Stomping down seventeen flights in a stairwell can get tedious (as well as dizzying); good thing there’s a “site-specific public art experience” throughout the stairwell called Exit Strategies. (Fun fact: When I was 18 at Columbia, I built a 12-ft.-tall site-specific sculpture in what I thought was an abandoned stairwell and the grad students filed a complaint about it/me to OSHA. (Yes, that’s what that line refers to in my “About” page.) Thank goodness for my professor Lisi Raskin who had my back. Eventually, I destroyed my sculpture as part of my project. The transience of art! My piece was called Asymptote and remains one of the craziest and greatest things I’ve done, to be honest.)

HOCA Foundation | KAWS: Along the Way at PMQ.
Hong Kong's Art Gallery Night 2019.

For the third and final leg, walk west and up all those steps that plague I mean characterize Sheung Wan to get to the Hollywood Road gallery area. I went for KAWS: Along the Way presented by HOCA Foundation at PMQ and Okuda: Digital Zoo at La Galerie – Paris 1839.

Okuda: Digital Zoo at La Galerie - Paris 1839.
Hong Kong's Art Gallery Night 2019.

Of course, there are galleries you’ll be skipping, but you can’t see everything in two hours. (Before H Queen’s existed, after the Pedder Building, I’d also visit the galleries around Ice House Street as well as attempt to see White Cube and others on Connaught Road.)

Note that I’m not factoring in any time for socializing—I purely viewed the art—so your mileage may vary. (I did, however, run into the HKwalls folks at the Okuda show.)

Lastly, this goes without saying for me (since I’m always in sneakers) but might not be as obvious to everyone else: Wear comfortable shoes.

And that’s the first night of Hong Kong Art Week! See you at the fairs!