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Phillips is pleased to present highlights from the upcoming New Now: Modern & Contemporary Art auction in Hong Kong. Taking place on 4 October, the sale will juxtapose renowned artists such as Yoshitomo Nara, Takashi Murakami, Ayako Rokkaku, Issy Wood, Miriam Cahn, Zhao Zhao, Edgar Plans alongside more emerging names, including Kenichi Hoshine and Nguyen Quoc Dung. Prior to the auction, the exhibition at Phillips’ Asia headquarters in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District will be open to the public from 24 September to 4 October.
Leading the sale is Takashi Murakami’s fresh-to-market work Flower of Hope , which exemplifies the artist’s ability to bridge the worlds of high art and popular culture. In this work, Murakami continues his exploration of the kawaii aesthetic, a concept deeply rooted in Japanese culture that signifies cuteness and innocence. The flowers’ wide, gleaming smiles and twinkling eyes epitomise pure happiness, inviting viewers into a vibrant, joyful world. The composition of the present work is symmetrical and dynamic, while the reflective surface of the platinum leaf background adds a shimmering quality, making the flowers appear to float and dance as the viewer moves around the work. This interactive element demands engagement, inviting viewers to immerse themselves in the work and experience the full scope of its visual and emotional impact.
Another highlight of the sale is Ayako Rokkaku’s Untitled (Wooden House), a unique hand-painted wooden installation created live in 2019 during her exhibition at Museum Jan in Amstelveen, Netherlands. This piece showcases the artist’s signature whimsical style in a captivating, three-dimensional form. It invites viewers to step into Rokkaku’s dream-like world, enveloping them in the process whilst blurring the boundaries between an art object and an interactive children’s playground. Entirely covered in her iconic swirling, finger-painted patterns, the present work not only transforms a simple wooden structure into her fairytale world, but also represents a significant evolution in the artist’s oeuvre in its interactive, immersive qualities. Through her unique approach, Rokkaku bridges the gap between art and imagination, leaving a lasting impression of joy and curiosity.
London-based American artist Issy Wood has proactively wielded an oeuvre that interweaves painting, music, and writing to explore the theme of desire. Often described as a ‘medieval millennial’, Wood has combined a touch of classical solemnity with an attitude of contemporary cynicism, through which she develops a highly stylised mannerism of the uncanny to approach the complex floods of desire hidden in everyday banality. This season’s New Now offers two works by Wood, Unsprung and Mozzarella / the confidante, both probe into a specific form of possession and thus violence expressed through human domestication of animals.
Cui Jie stands out as a beacon of innovation in the contemporary Chinese art scene, particularly through her intricate explorations of urban architecture. Her distinctive painting style combines architectural accuracy with an almost fiction-like futuristic impression, creating layered narratives that reflect and interrogate the transformative landscapes of modern Chinese cities. An outstanding example of her skyscraper studies, China Telecom Building 3 offered in the sale works from a real building, closely observed, only to break it down with incredible formal and artistic ingenuity. At its centre is the Pudong International Information Port, from Cui’s native Shanghai, in which the details are impeccably reproduced, but its side is given an impossible silver gleam, so intense it resembles the retro utopian fantasies of the Space Age. The work is produced by her stenciled black spray paint, which outside leaves a matrix-like grid pattern.
