After collectors and museum professionals descended upon the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre for the first preview day of Art Basel Hong Kong 2025, galleries across all sectors of the fair are reporting strong sales.

At David Zwirner (New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Hong Kong), Yayoi Kusama’s acrylic-on-canvas work INFINITY-NETS [ORUPX] (2013) sold for USD 3.5 million. The series ‘Infinity Nets’, begun in the 1960s, is one of the artist’s largest and most acclaimed bodies of work. In INFINITY-NETS [ORUPX], the curved strokes of white painted atop a blue underpainting evoke a dreamy, almost hallucinatory cloudscape. Kusama has said that each painting within the series is ‘without beginning, end, or center. The entire canvas would be occupied by [a] monochromatic net. This endless repetition caused a kind of dizzy, empty, hypnotic feeling.’

Also going for upwards of seven figures was Christina Quarles’s acrylic painting Push’m Lil’ Daisies, Make’m Come Up (2020), which Hauser & Wirth (Paris, Hong Kong, Monaco, Menorca, Gstaad, Saint Moritz, Zurich, London, Somerset, Los Angeles, New York) sold for USD 1.35 million. Emblematic of the 40-year-old’s practice, the large-scale work – stretching 183 cm tall and 213 cm long – shows an array of interconnected and fluidly rendered, boldly colored figures intersected by sharp, geometric patterns and planes.

Meanwhile, Anicka Yi’s hanging sculpture Thorn (2023–24) was sold by Gladstone Gallery (New York, Los Angeles, Brussels, Seoul) for USD 225,000. The piece, from the artist’s ‘Radiolaria’ series, embodies what Yi calls the concept of the ‘biologized machine’: she uses fiber optics, LEDs, motors, and more to bring the forms of ancient Radiolaria (500-million-year-old single-celled organisms with glass-like shells) to life through contemporary media.

With a presence in both the main Galleries sector and Encounters, Singapore, Sydney, and London gallery Ames Yavuz noted impressive sales across both presentations. Private collectors in Asia acquired works on canvas by Thai artist Pinaree Sanpitak, who is known for exploring themes of motherhood, womanhood, and self by using the motif of the breast as a symbol of feminism and femininity. Both large-scale pieces, Silver Offering I and Silver Offering II (both 2003), feature the artist’s iconic breast shape rendered in silver leaf and a background of shimmery opal-hued acrylic applied with crosshatched strokes. Both pieces sold for USD 350,000. In the Encounters sector, the gallery is presenting a suite of works by First Nations artist Betty Muffler. Here, Ames Yavuz has sold three works thus far, each in the range of USD 40,000–60,000.

Particularly notable is Chapter NY’s (New York) Discoveries presentation of work by rising artist Stella Zhong, which features a large central sculpture that sold for a price in the range of USD 70,000-100,000. Born in China and based in New York, Zhong works with sculpture, video, painting, and installation to explore the complexities of physics, astronomy, technology, and the contemporary human condition.

Balice Hertling (Paris) also sold out their booth of paintings by Chinese artist Zhi Wei, who often works with acrylic on Jacquard fabric and tulle further adorned with buttons and thread. The works, ranging in scale, fetched prices between USD 17,500 and USD 58,500.

Back in the Galleries sector, TKG+ (Taipei) sold several works by Taiwanese artist Jam Wu. Wu uses the medium of papercutting, augmented by acrylic, watercolor, and embroidery, to explore female and matriarchal narratives while drawing inspiration from Minnan (or Hokkien) culture, indigenous texts, and East Asian mythologies. Each work was acquired for a price ranging from USD 6,000 to USD 10,000.

Finally, The Palatial Gardens and Flowers (2021–23), a mesmerizing ink-on-paper piece by Chinese artist Bingyi, was acquired from Ink Studio (Beijing) by a private collector from North America for USD 75,000. Tina Kim Gallery (New York) sold two early works by Filipino-born American Ivatan self-taught artist Pacita Abad: The Far Side of Apo Island (1989) and Twenty-Five Meters Down on Layag-Layag Reef (1986) in the ranges of USD 250,000–500,000 and USD 100,000–250,000, respectively. Both come from a body of work featuring underwater scenes and exemplify the artist’s well-known use of trapunto, a method of making ‘quilted paintings’ by stitching and stuffing canvases instead of stretching them over a frame.

The fair’s opening day demonstrated robust demand for a diverse range of both established names and emerging voices, setting a promising tone for the rest of Art Basel Hong Kong 2025.