Billionaires rush to buy at Art Basel HK

Photo by Philippe Lopez / Agence France-Presse

"Art Basel has brought more Europeans and Americans to Hong Kong, and Asian collectors are becoming more interested in purchasing Western art," says gallery director Nicholas Olney.

The works of Ashley Bickerton, who quit New York after 12 years to move to Bali in 1993, provide a contemporary twist on Gauguin's exoticism. A painting of two topless women with silver bodies astride a scooter, garlands in their dreadlocks, is selling for $190,000 by Singapore-based Gajah Gallery.

David Zwirner is bringing oil-on-canvas works by 28-year-old Oscar Murillo, an emerging artist who catapulted from relative obscurity three years ago to New York's latest wunderkind. The Colombia-born artist, best-known for his abstract works, has seen his auction prices surge as much as 5,600 percent in two years as a result of frenzied art flipping.

Citizenship to Sun's Jing Bang: A Country Based on Whale is limited to 100 people, though visas can be purchased for $30 each at the fair.

Describing his one-party state (administered by the Magician's Party), which has a planned life span of just six weeks, Sun writes: "If history is a big lie, then the Republic of Jing Bang uses one lie to intercept another lie". The project is jointly presented by the Singapore Tyler Print Institute and ShanghArt gallery.