Whether it’s due to a recession, boredom, or resetting of priorities, all shades of contemporary art have experienced better days. The young and the restless (buyers and sellers) are suffering dry heaves after a brief lifetime of thinking prices only go in one trajectory. At recent auctions around the world, results for painters who are repped by the big and the fashionable have been subjected to a cold-water reality. Among the uppermost casualties during the Hong Kong Spring sales was Nicolas Party, who two years ago held a sold out show at Hauser & Wirth in Hong Kong, but failed to secure any bids for three paintings on offer at Sotheby’s and Christie’s. Similarly, consigners (presuming there were different owners) of canvases by millennial, middle-aged, and the deceased, including Christina BanBan, Jia Aili, Zeng Fanzhi, and Lynne Drexler, could all self-soothe together. Perhaps Christie’s and Sotheby’s can blame it on the feng shui of the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, because both houses are gunning to unveil their dedicated offices to host their own public and private sales by September in the heart of the city’s Central business district.  

As per usual, the Chinese are the favorite scapegoats for nearly everything that goes wrong in the world today. Market observers, rightly or wrongly, have said the lack of mainland bidders has brought auction results down—and perhaps back to reality. Mirroring this observation was how Gallery Weekend Beijing felt comparatively subdued to the point that some participants said it felt like a weekend party for locals, recalling bygone Covid days, or for those that can remember them, the quaint 1990s. A cryptic sign was spotted outside of Beijing’s JINGART fair reading: “See you in Hong Kong in August!” No official word yet on if, when, or who is going to participate in Shanghai art fair ART021’s Special Administrative Region edition.