Gallery Exit’s Anthony Tao presented works by Chris Huen Sin Kan, Lulu Ngie, and Chihoi in Art Basel’s inaugural Online Viewing Rooms 

Meet the collector-turned-gallerist fostering Hong Kong’s talents 

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The Tin Wan suburb in Aberdeen sits on the southern coasts of Hong Kong Island, far from the city’s clamoring skyscrapers and bustling traffic. Nestled in this unlikely neighborhood, Gallery Exit is located on the third floor of a nondescript industrial building cluttered with pallets and forklifts. Its spacious interior and stark, unpainted concrete floor are in keeping with the surroundings, but the two sets of windows – uncommon in white cube architecture – stand out.As connecting membranes between the inside and the outside, these windows echo Gallery Exit’s commitment to their local context. The gallery has a strong focus on Hong Kong artists, who constitute a majority of their roster, alongside artists from other Asian countries. Until 2014, Gallery Exit rented a compact commercial space in SoHo, Hong Kong. For director and co-founder Anthony Tao, moving to Tin Wan was ‘a necessity as artists needed to show more ambitious, larger-scale work’. ‘We are like the quiet guy of the [Hong Kong contemporary art] scene,’ he adds, ‘we just do our own thing. If people like it, they like it. If they don’t like it, they will tell us.’

Before opening the gallery, Tao was an art collector who worked in advertising. From the beginning, he was, he says, ‘impressed by local Hong Kong artists’. In a bid to showcase these homegrown talents, Tao and a friend, Aenon Loo, founded Gallery Exit in 2008. ‘The first two, three years were very difficult for us,’ he recalls. On top of having to carve out space for a fledgling gallery, there was the turbulence from the global financial crisis. Fortunately, the tide turned, and a few years later the gallery benefited from the contemporary art boom in Hong Kong as well as of the consolidation of the city as one of the most significant art hubs in Asia. Gallery Exit has developed a particularly tight-knit relationship with the artists they represent. ‘We have known many of them since when they were in art school,’ says Tao, adding, ‘I try to find people that are more persistent, who really want to be artists, to do something inspiring for other people.’ Taking pride in exhibition-making, Gallery Exit’s conversations with their artists are not purely conceptual. ‘There’s a lot that people don’t see when it comes to helping artists,’ elaborated Tao, ‘it could be very technical, down to what kind of wood [they should choose] for the frames.’ Gallery Exit’s artists such as sculptor Nadim Abbas or painter&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/15851/Chris-HUEN-Sin-Kan" target="_blank">Chris Huen Sin Kan</a> have now all been propelled onto the global stage. ‘We don’t limit ourselves to a specific&nbsp;medium,’ says Tao. ‘We do our own thing rather than let ourselves be dictated by the tastes of the market’.&nbsp;

‘It has been a tough time,’ he continues, addressing Hong Kong’s tempestuous political climate. ‘During difficult times people don’t always intend to buy art. We’re figuring how to manage in terms of sales, but our priority is to put on a good show.’ This stoicism echoes a famous quote by playwright Tom Stoppard: ‘Look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else’. The gallery’s unwavering commitment to Hong Kong, coupled with its dedication and astute flexibility, has for over a decade turned challenges into opportunities.&nbsp;Gallery Exit presented works by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/15851/Chris-HUEN-Sin-Kan">Chris Huen Sin Kan</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/15557/Lulu-Ngie" target="_blank">Lulu Ngie,</a> and&nbsp;Chihoi, among others,&nbsp;in Art Basel’s inaugural <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/viewing-rooms">Online Viewing Rooms</a>, find out more <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/viewing-rooms">here</a>.Marcus Yee is a writer from Singapore, currently based in Hong Kong.

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Gallery Exit’s Anthony Tao presented works by Chris Huen Sin Kan, Lulu Ngie, and Chihoi in Art Basel’s inaugural Online Viewing Rooms