By IANS
Hong Kong : A dazzling array of cutting-edge Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Indian and Pakistani art will take pride of place at Christie’s Hong Kong Asian Contemporary Art sale to be held on May 27.
Reflecting a wide and dramatic variety of styles, media and forms, these exceptional works capture the creativity and extraordinary concepts by eminent artists in Asia, as well as the exciting art scene throughout the region.
In this Spring auction series, Christie’s Hong Kong will introduce a real-time multi-media auction service Christie’s LIVE(tm), becoming the first international auction house in Asia to offer fine art through live online auctions.
Christie’s LIVE(tm) enables collectors around the world to bid from their personal computers while enjoying the look, sound and feel of the sale.
Among the highlights are the works of Atul Dodiya from Mumbai. Dodiya’s allegorical collages fuse fragments of art, historical masterpieces with moments of pop culture, current events and his own autobiography.
‘Vishal’, painted in 1989 (estimate: US $128,200-$192,300), is from an important series concerned with the simultaneous pictorial depiction of the interior and exterior of a given space. Taking cues from the flat candy-coloured pop of David Hockney, ‘Vishal’ belongs to Dodiya’s ‘photo-realistic’ period when the artist often based his works on photographic images to capture their life-like qualities.
Dodiya carefully controls shadow and light in this work. Masterfully mirroring shapes, the two doorframes serve to enhance the unbroken yet divided picture frame, while the static figure of the boy is further reflected in the angled basketball hoop in the ‘exterior’.
Also of importance are the works of Jiten Thukral and Sumir Tagra, two emerging collaborative artists. Thukral and Tagra address current issues in urban India through a wide variety of media.
In ‘Somnium Genero – Aeris 05’ (estimate: $44,900-$57,700), the artistic duo plays with photorealism and surrealism in their depiction of an interior scene, just outside the boundaries of real life. Through a strict adherence to naturalism and scrupulous attention to detail, the artists create a virtual reality on their canvases.
The work implies the colour schemes of a cloud-strewn sky, oddly filled with various media and recording devices. It also suggests the repetitions and patterns of wallpaper.
Melding space age designs with elements from outdated transistor radios and vintage TVs, the whimsical painting combines nostalgia with cutting-edge imagery.
Also on sale are works by emerging artists like Subodh Gupta and Bharti Kher.