Late last month, nearly 92,000 attendees flocked to Hong Kong for Art Basel\u2019s latest art exhibition. As usual, the organization\u2019s Hong Kong edition brought together some of the most renowned artists and galleries from Asia and beyond, showcasing the contemporary art landscape of the region in all its variety. However, among the fair\u2019s more than 170 presentations, one booth distinguished itself: Perrotin.<\/p>\n
This year, the international gallery featured works by Mehdi Ghadyanloo, Steph Huang, and, perhaps most notably, Lauren Tsai. \u201cThis is my first collaboration with Perrotin and my debut at an art fair,\u201d the multidisciplinary artist shared in a recent Instagram post. If there was any apprehension about her first time at an art fair, Tsai\u2019s installation certainly didn\u2019t show it. The immersive display illustrated the wide scope of her work, including drawings, grand paintings, stop-motion animations seen on vintage TVs, and a version of her installation Poison Little Girl.<\/p>\n
Initially crafted in 2025, Poison Little Girl certainly formed the core of Tsai\u2019s exhibition in Hong Kong. The sculpture portrays one of Tsai\u2019s recurring figures, Astrid, sitting on the edge of a simple bed, her gray skirt fanned out around her. Even upon first sight, it\u2019s obvious that something is amiss: the girl\u2019s neck ends abruptly, entirely severed. Her head lies just a short distance from her body, resting on a pillow, eyes weary and sunken. The disquieting tableau is completed by a glowing lily-of-the-valley flower, its stem tenderly held by Astrid\u2019s hands.<\/p>\n
Like much of Tsai\u2019s artistry, Poison Little Girl delves into psychological and transitional landscapes. The installation is part of a broader project known as The Dying World, where Astrid must confront themes of memory, transience, transcendence, loss, and death, which have underpinned Tsai\u2019s work for years.<\/p>\n
\u201cAstrid herself grapples with the concerns I have regarding my identity and my body,\u201d Tsai confessed in a 2025 interview with IndieWire. \u201cThe sensation of wearing a mask and feeling like a puppet.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s exactly why Astrid appears vacant, a character that isn\u2019t so much embodied as it is projected onto. Rather than merely being a human, this girl serves as a conduit for emotions to be visualized or comprehended, existing in what Perrotin describes as an \u201cenvironment influenced by psychological rather than narrative logic.\u201d That notion emphasized Tsai\u2019s entire showcase, encouraging attendees to draw out their own interpretations based on the ensemble of interconnected works.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was intrigued by someone who might have slipped into being forgotten while they were still alive,\u201d Tsai noted, \u201cso that\u2019s Astrid. And Astrid can navigate between these two realms, although in my mind, the Dying World and the real world are all one entity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beyond this, the Perrotin presentation also experimented with scale. The Dying World incorporates various media, each assuming different dimensions\u2014a fact Tsai aimed to emphasize during Art Basel. \u201cI knew I wanted to create something that played with scale,\u201d the artist explained to Vogue Hong Kong in a video interview, \u201cbecause the project is rooted in stop-motion, which involves puppet animation. I sought to create a version of [Astrid\u2019s] bedroom at a real scale while presenting elements at a miniature scale.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition to Tsai, Perrotin also exhibited works by Takashi Murakami, Mr., Emi Kuraya, Emily Mae Smith, Danielle Orchard, Lee Bae, and Makiko Kudo, among others. To find out more about Perrotin\u2019s booth and the 2026 art fair in Hong Kong, visit the Art Basel website.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Late last month, nearly 92,000 attendees flocked to Hong Kong for Art Basel\u2019s latest art exhibition. As usual, the organization\u2019s Hong Kong edition brought together some of the most renowned artists and galleries from Asia and beyond, showcasing the contemporary art landscape of the region in all its variety. However, among the fair\u2019s more than 170 presentations, one booth distinguished […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":555691,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-555690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/winklersart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/winklersart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/winklersart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winklersart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winklersart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=555690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/winklersart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winklersart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/555691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/winklersart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=555690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winklersart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=555690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winklersart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=555690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}