HONG KONG - 15 May 2025 – Phillips is pleased to unveil highlights from its upcoming Modern & Contemporary Art: Evening & Day Sale in Hong Kong on 27 May. The meticulously curated auction will feature exceptional works by renowned artists across eras and regions, with 70% of the works having never appeared at auction before. Reflecting the market’s appetite for fresh-to-market works by the art world’s most revered and in-demand names, the sale will be led by artworks from George Condo, Anish Kapoor, Wu Guanzhong, Zao Wou-Ki, Hernan Bas, and Jonas Wood. Further underscoring Phillips’ commitment to Chinese Contemporary art, the sale will present a carefully selected array of works spanning the last two decades, spotlighting leading artists such as Wei Jia, Jia Aili, Yan Bing, Ding Shilun, and more. Prior to the auction, the preview exhibition will be open to the public at Phillips’ Asia headquarters in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District from 16 to 27 May.

Cindy Lim, Head of Evening Sale, Modern & Contemporary Art, Phillips Hong Kong, and Rebecca Hu, Head of Sale, Modern & Contemporary Art, Phillips Hong Kong, jointly said, “In response to the increasingly discerning art market, we have adopted a nimbler approach for this season's sale, curating a selection that upholds the highest standards of excellence to captivate sophisticated collectors. Notably, 90% of the works in the Evening Session will be making their auction debut, underscoring our commitment to staying ahead of market trends and offering a compelling, tightly curated collection. Highlights include outstanding pieces by some of the most influential artists of the 20th and 21st centuries—George Condo, Anish Kapoor, Hernan Bas, and Rashid Johnson—alongside a special focus on leading figures from China’s70s to 90s generation.”

Among the top lots of the sale is George Condo’s Blues In F from the artist’s2020 Blues Paintings series, where each painting takes its title from various music keys. The work showcases his mastery of traditional painting techniques through a multi-layered approach, creating rich textural contrasts and sculptural relief effects. It features fragmented facial features emerging from a modulated blue ground, with asymmetrical eyes, sharp white teeth, and geometric planes suggesting various emotional states. Influenced by Picasso's Cubism, Condo adds a psychological dimension, capturing emotions like rage, fear, and anxiety. Created during the 2020 pandemic, the work resonates with themes of isolation and alienation, reflecting universal human experiences. Offered in auction for the first time, it was included in Condo’s largest Asian solo exhibition to date, George Condo: The Picture Gallery held in Shanghai’s Long Museum in 2021.

Another standout is Anish Kapoor's Untitled (Organic Green / Apple Red), a striking example of his renowned concave mirror series, crafted from polished stainless steel and coated in rich lacquer. The sculpture features a subtly recessed circular surface that blends deep organic green with a spectral apple red, creating a liminal visual threshold that alters spatial perception. More than a reflective object, it acts as a “field-mirror,” merging the material with the immaterial and drawing viewers into a dreamlike, fluid reality where colour becomes a transformative force. This immersive and enigmatic work exemplifies Kapoor’s mastery in manifesting the intangible, standing as a pinnacle of his artistic vision.

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In-Demand Western Contemporary Works

American artist Hernan Bas has emerged as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary painting by redefining the influence he had taken from Les Nabis through a different lens. Fresh-to-Market, Case Study (Harvey, Palmist/glove collector) explores characters engaged in obsessive pursuits, blurring the line between eccentricity and conceptual art. The protagonist, Harvey, is portrayed standing in front of a taxonomical glove display, highlighting how personal obsessions can become aesthetic statements. The painting includes a back-facing man with morbid skin, referencing the beauty of Decadent movement. Harvey's dual identity as a palmist and glove collector creates a conceptual tension between presence and absence, reflecting Bas' interest in characters caught between convention and esoteric pursuits.

Coming to the auction for the first time, Untitled Escape Collage by Rashid Johnson uses organic formal expression to explore themes of race, identity, and history. As part of a new generation of African American artists addressing broader cultural concerns, Johnson's work reflects 'post-blackness' by balancing the celebration of blackness with its limitations. The Escape Collage series, pivotal since 2016, combines painting, sculpture, and installation to create visual cosmologies enriched by universal symbolism and personal biography. Drawing from his upbringing in Chicago and African diasporic culture, the collage alternates between city reality and fantasy, featuring palm trees, African masks, animal skins, and ceramic tiles, weaving together diverse emotions and collective apprehensions.

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Another Western Contemporary highlight being presented at auction for the first time is American artist Jonas Wood’s Punch and Judy, which was exhibited in 2015 at his first solo exhibition in London. Known for incorporating everyday objects like pots, plants, and birdcages, Wood began exploring the bird cage motif in 2010, evolving it into a complex symbol of both structure and emotion. In Punch and Judy , the cage dominates the canvas, distorting space and blending abstraction with representation. The work nods to British puppet folklore and Henri Matisse—an enduring influence—while capturing Wood’s unique balance of the familiar and the surreal.

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Leading Japanese Icons

Izumi Kato's Untitled is a near life-sized wooden sculpture that engages viewers through its sensory presence, including the subtle scent of wood. The figure's elliptical eyes and bluish-green face evoke a primordial vitality, while golden and earthy brown lines trace its torso and arms, adding dimensionality. Seated cross-legged, the figure is surrounded by miniature resin sculptures, creating a visual lexicon of whimsical yet totemic motifs. Kato's work reflects his interest in human figures and animistic folklore, inviting fluid and subjective interpretation, and resonating with ancient cultural traditions.

Red Petals belongs to a unique corpus in Yayoi Kusama’s oeuvre that centres on the theme of flowers, a motif she has explored since the 1950s and highlighted in major retrospectives at Tate Modern and M+ Museum. This theme reflects Kusama's fascination with nature and her personal history, including her family's plant nursery business and her psychological landscape, using flowers to symbolize the universe's cycles of life and decay. The repetitive organic forms and striking red and black contrast in Red Petals exemplify Kusama's abstract and conceptual approach to nature.

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Asian Modern Masters

As one of the renowned "Three Musketeers of Chinese Modern Art," Wu Guanzhong began his creative journey with Western oil paints before transitioning to Eastern ink wash. Amidst the sweeping tide of Western cultural influence, he tirelessly explored the path of nationalizing art. Springs and Autumns, created in 1994, is a masterpiece from the peak of Wu's mature artistic period. The genesis of this theme can be traced back to a sketch he made in 1985 during his travels in Jiuzhaigou, Sichuan, capturing a tranquil autumnal scene. Over the following years, Wu revisited this composition in various mediums, with one ink-and-colour rendition of the same title even entering the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. In the present work, the artist interprets the subject using Western painting materials, yet the visual effect exudes an Eastern sensibility—restrained and poetic. From a distance, the piece appears to depict a bleak autumn scene, but upon closer inspection, subtle hints of sprouting green emerge, suggesting the imminent arrival of spring. With serene and unhurried brushstrokes, Wu evokes the passage of time and the vibrancy of life.

Zao Wou-Ki’s work from the late 1950s continues the essence of his Oracle Bone Period, preserving the characteristics of textual symbols while developing amore expressive artistic language. They masterfully blend the freehand spirit of traditional Chinese painting with the brushwork of Western Abstract Expressionism. 07.04.59 featured in this season’s sale emerged during this pivotal phase , blending the deconstructed spiritual motifs of his earlier period with the energetic brushwork and fluidity that would define his later style. Dominated by a monochromatic palette, particularly gold-brown tones, the work showcases Zao’s nuanced exploration of shade and texture, a hallmark of his most sought-after large-scale paintings from this era. Several of Zao’s top ten auction results feature the same palette, reinforcing the iconic status of this distinctive chromatic treatment within the collector’s canon.

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Chinese Contemporary Art by the Artists Born From the 70s to 90s

This season, Phillips is proud to highlight a curated group of works by Chinese artists born from the 1970s to the 1990s, with most of the works never having been auctioned before. These artists, including Jia Aili, Wei Jia, Yan Bing, Xia Yu, Cui Jie, Ding Shilun, Fang Yuan, and Zhang Zipiao, are vital to global contemporary art because they offer fresh perspectives rooted in China’s unique context while engaging universally relevant themes.

Jia Aili, a prominent mid-generation artist in China's contemporary art scene, is internationally recognised for redefining the visual language of a new generation. Untitled, featured in this season's sale, adopts an industrial archaeology perspective, juxtaposing the fragility of individual existence against vast historical dimensions. A jet engine rendered with anatomical precision evokes oppressive tension, while a ghostly white figure in the foreground symbolizes existential aimlessness. Through restrained realism and acold palette, Jia explores the aesthetics of 'creative destruction' and modern nihilism, reinterpreting the 'body-machine-power' dynamic within China’s unique socio-historical context.

Yan Bing, born in Gansu, China, draws inspiration from the modest objects of his impoverished childhood—cowhide, potatoes, mushrooms, and steamed buns—transforming them into meditative still lifes. Through repeated depictions, he elevates these humble items into quiet monuments to nature, evoking primal forces with a blend of ruggedness and introspection. Mushroom No. 30 presented in this season’s sale belongs to the artist’s highly acclaimed Mushroom series, which centres on wild mushrooms commonly found in the rural landscapes of northwest China, continuing his exploration of the "spirituality in mundane objects." These fungi, thriving in damp soil or decaying wood, are rendered with a duality of fragility and resilience under his brush, becoming metaphors for the cycles of life, nature’s generosity, and the solitude of existence.

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As a prominent figure among the emerging post-90s generation of Chinese artists, Ding Shilun masterfully fuses the visual dynamism of Japanese manga, the contemporary language of Western pop culture, and the spiritual depth of traditional Chinese aesthetics. In March, his work The Adoption of the Maiden sold for £114,300 at Phillips London’s Evening Sale—six times its low estimate—marking a triumphant auction debut. This season, The Dispute (After La Sylphide) featured in the Hong Kong auction, further showcasing Ding’s distinctive creative vision. The work draws inspiration from the romantic ballet La Sylphide (1832), which tells the story of a tragic, unattainable love between a human and a spirit. In Ding’s reinterpretation, the figures appear physically close yet remain emotionally and spiritually divided by an invisible force. Employing fluid, delicate oil brushstrokes and diluted layers, Ding evokes the translucent quality of traditional Chinese figure painting using the ink washing technique. Through his signature meticulous brushwork and surreal conceptual approach, Ding Shilun achieves a sense of spiritual liberation within the constraints of form.

(Press Release)