Part of Friedich Kunath's Earth to Fuckface exhibition at White Cube Gallery.
the tycoon pearl lam , owner of art galleries in Shanghai and London, is located at the headquarters of Hong Kong, where everything happens today . A russian oligarch , with a private plane, is interested in the work of Su Xiaobai, exhibited in one of his galleries. A commissioner of one of the great museums of modern art in Asia discuss with her about monographic exhibitions. And Lam tries to enlighten me on taoist, buddhist and chinese calligraphy . With a white Balenciaga and violet hair , 5-inch Louboutins and cuff-sized bracelets, Pearl Lam looks like a work of art.
“I see myself as a bridge between east and west” her, she points to her as she sips oolong tea in an elliptical porcelain cup. Over a designer sofa Danful Yang , a piece between a chippendale chair with a sofa Luis Nosecuantos in gold, he speaks energetically.
Hong Kong occupies a prominent place on the international art scene. Collectors and dealers flock there attracted by its duty free policy and by the language of business, the English . What capital of art in asia, challenges London and New York with venues for the most cutting-edge galleries on the planet and, of course, with the star festival of the year: Art Basel Hong Kong. Art lives its best moment in the smallest city on earth.
My first surprise is to see how much land has been gained from the sea: the HSBC building by Norman Foster and the IM Pei of Bank of China (icons of 20th century architecture built on the coast) are today far from the shore. Its citizens joke: victoria harbor , between Kowloon and Hong Kong Island, will soon be the victory dam.
the one that will be the most important space in the art world is under construction , on 40 hectares of reclaimed Kowloon land, and colossal enough to become **the West Kowloon Cultural Quarter (WKCD)**. Costing €1.8 billion and opening in phases, WKCD will host a opera, art galleries, a pavilion, an open-air stage and the M+Museum (20th and 21st century design and architecture), in a building of Herzog & de Meuron It looks like a skyscraper lying on its side.
View of the Central district.
The Antony Gormley's Terracotta Army, Asian Field , will land here, as well as the famous bar of Japanese sushi on granite Shiro Kuramata . The best place to watch the WKCD rise is from the ozone-bar , atop The Ritz-Carlton hotel. In this city of superlative numbers , this bar is apparently the tallest in the world . Use your binoculars in booths designed by Japan's Wonderwall, with surprisingly comfortable potted seats. A good way to go into shock with the bill , also through the roof, of the cocktails.
THE SHOPS IN THE CENTER MAKE UP WITH ART
In the urban core, a forest of shopping centers and bank headquarters in skyscrapers , the old and nondescript colonial buildings have been remodeled. at the moment they are 15 buildings , between the former central police station and Victoria Gaol, which are now art and heritage centres. All thanks to the philanthropist's budget injection jockey-club (which has organized races in Hong Kong since the 1860s) and the professional collaboration of architects such as Herzog & de Meuron.
A few hundred yards from London's White Cube gallery, the pedder neoclassical building , built by the British in 1924, are located renowned international galleries like the New Yorker Gagosian, with monographic exhibitions of artists of the stature of Giacometti or Damien Hirst, and Hong Kong's Hanart TZ, which exhibits the best Chinese artists, such as Gu Wenda.
When I went to Art Basel HK, I participated in an initiative with a trendy group taking selfies during the opening of the Police Married Quarters (PMQ) buildings, today a lively design center . Abandoned for a decade, the nondescript but respectable twin buildings , built in the fifties, were used as the location of horror movies. In the same place where a policeman tries to resuscitate his wife with Chinese medicine (Peter Chan's Going Home), Swarovski participated in Art Basel with a colossal full moon, made with 8,000 topazes. At PMQ you'll find Hong Kong hipster labels like BlkSheep Empire's brocade leather shoes; artisan shoes with **G.O.D (The Goods of Desire)** tattooed tigers, watermelon earrings from The Refinery and the red coral chandeliers at Lala Curio.
The culinary offer is international: tapas at Vasco, burgers and burritos at Wilburs, Chinese food at Sohofama and British avant-garde at Jason Atherton's Aberdeen Street Social. Try the salmon marinated in beetroot and the free range eggs in haggis with rinds . If you believe, as I did, that Hong Kong is the place to buy cheap technology, counterfeit watches and handbags, you're stuck in the last century.
Bibo French restaurant.
WHEN ARTISTS REMOVE THE PAST
Alan Lo , a friendly Anglophile Chinese has opened numerous restaurants, wine bars and cafes in retro Hong Kong buildings. At The Pawn bar, in the old Woo Cheong Pawn Shop , from the 1890s, there Leather Chesterfields and wooden benches befitting a gentlemen's club , and the British chef Tom Aikens supervising the kitchen. In The Principal, in an old school and with two Michelin stars , the chef Jonay Arms It serves an international menu (baked suckling pig with lemon puree, venison with chestnuts and Jerusalem artichokes) and 700 world wine references.
“I am passionate about preserving old buildings and giving them a new life” , he tells me. As head of the Hong Kong Design Ambassadors, that sentiment is far more valuable to the city than any London blue plaques, linking buildings to a celebrity or historical event.
Lo is co-founder of Duddell's, the most famous art house in the city . Designed by Ilse Crawford on a Art Deco Mansion Reminiscent of London's Chelsea Arts Club , without that arrogant attitude but with a proud community. Jazz sounds here and a elegant two-Michelin-star Cantonese restaurant, a terrace, and a library . The contemporary art that hangs on its walls is entertainment in itself.
The PMQ complex.
It is prepared by the launch of a hotel (for 2017) in the most neglected margin of kowloon , seven minutes by car from the future West Kowloon Cultural District . The hotel with no name is still designing it Thomas Heatherwick as "an accommodation with the history and legacy of its architecture". A few words that are not often heard in a city of skyscrapers.
I asked Lo what other places the art community used to eat at. He took me to Ammo, a bistro in a former ammunition dump housing the Asia Society . American architects Todd Williams and Billie Tsien they designed a glass box in a setting reminiscent of the jungle in Jurassic Park. The designer Joyce Wang It has installation: a copper pipe in the form of a bullet casing. Wang also designed the Mott 32 restaurant, in what was Standard and Chartered Bank safe deposit box , reminiscent of the home of Chinese emigrants (1930s), and as glamorous as one of the Chinatown settings.
Christian Schaulin
OFF THE CIRCUIT, A NEW 'LOFT' FEVER EMERGE
Since China took all its production to the mainland , the empty factories and warehouses of Hong Kong have been occupied by artists and designers, creating a booming loft scene in industrial areas , at the height of New York SoHo and of the london docklands . And you know it works when you see The Peninsula's elegant patrons arriving at Fo Tan and Wong Chuk Hang aboard a Mini Clubman with driver.
In Wong Chuk Hang , the American heiress Mimi Brown coordinates her association Spring Workshop, in the large space of a abandoned clothing store , entombed in exhaust fumes and surrounded by yellow cranes. From her headquarters, whose walls are covered in pink wallpaper hand-painted by children, Brown organizes daring artistic programs that focus attention on remote Central, a bus ride away. In 2016 they inaugurate their own metro station.
Christian Schaulin
Where once sewing machines worked, Today Gujarati raps his protest songs, Meanwhile in AstroTurf , Brown's Terrace, artists and agronomists gather their edible crops, sculpt the food and record their experiments. One of her posts is a map illustrating places to eat: the Nam Long Shan Road Cooked Food Market, Pattaya Thai, Mum Veggie + Coffee + Sweet, GCX Café and Kyoto Matcha Café , whose neon signs reveal the nature of their food: simple and at a good price . To the east, in a humble apartment tower in Chai Wan, young artists and designers have set up their studios in abandoned buildings and, in parallel, new galleries selling your work.
AO Vertical Art Space is the world's first vertical photography gallery : From the third to the thirteenth floor of an abandoned factory. Platform China carries out irreverent projects by artists like Zhao Zhao , which chopped a 200-year-old Buddha in Lego-like pieces . He covered them with gold and assembled them like chess pieces. Hanging from steel beams, in the 10 Chancery Lane Gallery space, the artists' huge silk banknotes from past dynasties Shao Yinong and Muchen , demonstrate how these industrial spaces stimulate spatial thinking . Elsewhere, designer adventurers Jesse McLin and Julie Progin mold porcelain pots at Latitude #22 N , a studio in a 1970s warehouse Paolo Sinisterra and Ignacio Garcia they design clothing for their own Tangram firm. You don't come here to acquire just a pretty watercolor. EVERY LAST HOTEL GETS CREATIVE
The art community turns its attention to André Fu's luxurious temple of hedonism, The Upper House hotel, in affluent Pacific Place. Also to EAST, designed by William Lim at the end of the new financial area of TaiKoo, both of Swire Hotels Group. “A great hotel should tell a story” says Fu, a Cambridge architecture graduate, as he leads me on this “poetic journey” through The Upper House.
The industrial hall of the Ammo bistro.
The tour starts, as in most skyscrapers in Hong Kong, in a few escalators called Torii (exit gate in Japanese), built to transport customers from the stone curtain of its superb façade to The Secret Garden and The Pond , in what is possibly one of the most expensive estates on the planet . The pool is there simply to soothe guests, who gaze at the rippling reflections of the water cast off parchment paper lanterns in The Void, as Fu calls the inner courtyard.
The elevator, an illuminated onyx box , take the guests to the restaurant Cafe Gray Deluxe , with views of Victoria Harbor's nightly fireworks and culinary talent. Proof lobster soup or milk wagyu with truffles and passion fruit millefeuille . Between office skyscrapers, the EAST hotel offers a radical change in its restaurant, FEAST, training in the gym, BEAST, and rooms such as offices. The cloud of bronze butterflies in the lobby illustrates how well connected it is to get here, from Central in a 10-minute tube ride for less than €1. The modern entrance to the station is just outside the lobby. EAST's rooms are two to three times smaller than The Upper House, but they seem older, with their orange tones and mirrored walls. Those facing the port, in the 18th floor, look at the new cruise terminal in what was the Kai Tak airport. On the 32nd floor, the Sugar bar with terrace It's perfect on warm nights with a DJ playing Cuban music and a saxophonist. Life couldn't be sweeter.
Christian Schaulin
URBAN ART ENTERS THE COCKTAIL SCENE
For a long time, the city's nightlife was reduced to trendy hotel bars and clubs packed with businessmen. Today sophisticated spaces designed for the artistic community they work in the **gentrified industrial areas**.
In the chaotic neighborhood of Sai Ying Pun , in what was a ping-pong club, it works the best tapas in Barcelona . Ping Pong 129 Gintonería is a cave with graffiti by Hong Kong Banksy, Tsang Tsou Choi, aka The King of Kowloon . With a neon sign in Chinese, the huge bar 'Train your body', offers 40 types of gin from around the world and craft beers. Around the corner, elegant groups fill the street after a private visit to the small 2P gallery.
In the bohemian district of Sheung Wan , where stone dragons shine in antique shops and lions at the entrance to the Man Mo temple , the artistic society eats at Yardbird , a yakitori skewer bar minimalist in white, and in Bibo , a artsy bistro with works of Takashi Murakami, Kaw and Jean-Michel Basquiat and even a scooter graffitied by the same King of Kwlon . your cocktail The Coffin Varnish synthesizes the flavor of this eclectic neighborhood: South American beans infused with calvados, vermouth, lemon, honey, Earl Gray tea and champagne.
Retro art and design dealer Ross Urwin.
One of the most independent artistic associations, Para Site, in Sheung Wan , has exhibited twice a controversial Chinese artist Ai Weiwei , when government funding came to an end. But a fundraising auction, a corporate sponsor and patrons from around the world assume daring samples like the Ten Million Rooms of Yearning: Sex in Hong Kong.
At the Asia Art Archive, claire hsu (crowned 'queen of the arts' by Hong Kong Tatler magazine) pulled off something captivating with archival footage at the recent exhibition, Mapping Asia , about disputed territories in Asia and their nationalities. Heading an institution that houses the largest online (and physical) library in the history of Asian contemporary art, she tackled the World Economic Forum 2014 in Davos from the perspective of cultural heritage. “Artists need to feel free to express themselves. Censorship must be avoided at any level. And here it is an issue that is as important as it is vulnerable to our cultural identity,” she says. However, if Hong Kong has reached its political and cultural maturity, it can now broaden its sights beyond avant-garde art fairs.
* This article is published in the May 84 issue of the Condé Nast Traveler magazine. This number is available in its digital version for iPad in the iTunes AppStore, and in the digital version for PC, Mac, Smartphone, iPad and iPhone in the Zinio virtual kiosk (on Smartphone devices: Android, PC/Mac, Win8, WebOS, Rim, iPad, iPhone). Also, you can find us on Google Play Newsstand (for Android smartphones and tablets) .
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