Danielle So, Kimberly Wong, and Alki Auyeung.
It’s no secret that a collegial spirit of generosity is alive and well throughout Phillips’ global offices, and in fact, right now it’s our favorite time of year — Secret Santa season.
So get in the spirit and join Kimberley Wong, Danielle So, and Alki Auyeung in Hong Kong as they reveal the artworks they selected for one another. The trio shares personal reflections on symbolism, storytelling, and memorable moments that shaped their choices. Plus, learn more about their selections (and make a few of your own) in our upcoming Hong Kong auctions.
Ewa Juszkiewicz
Ewa Juszkiewicz, Untitled (Study for 'Girl in Blue'), 2013. Modern & Contemporary Art & Design Sale, Hong Kong.
Fresh and rare to the market, this work is a study for the 2013 painting Girl in Blue, which was the first work by Ewa Juszkiewicz to be offered in a New York Modern & Contemporary Art sale at Phillips, achieving US$730,800 in 2021.
An early example of Juszkiewicz’s mature work, this study was executed the year the artist graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, Poland, and showcases her characteristic approach to reimagining the past. Drawing on centuries of European painting for inspiration, the artist meticulously renders her portraits with exacting precision yet replaces her sitters’ heads with foreign, and often grotesque, objects, thus destabilizing art historical conventions. As the artist has explained, “My work is a protest against conventional images of femininity, against idealizations, and traditional canons of female beauty.”
Kohei Nawa
Kohei Nawa, PixCell-Carp #5, 2013. Modern & Contemporary Art & Design Sale, Hong Kong.
In East Asia, the carp symbolizes good fortune, success, abundance, and prosperity. We can think of no better themes with which to bid farewell to 2025 as we look toward the future, and no better artist for our current moment than Kohei Nawa.
Nawa’s surreal, semi-abstract Pix-Cell series transposes found images and objects into reality. The artist first encounters the object as a group of pixels — an image on the computer screen. The source object is then covered with a layer of translucent glass beads. These spheres on the sculpture create a magnifying effect in varying degrees, offering a fragmented perspective of the object’s surface, distorting the original image.
These themes are extraordinarily relevant today. As the Nawa has described, “Humans use sight and touch to sense the external skins of things, and that is the large part of how they are aware of the world surrounding them. In a society where technology has progressed to the extent that things can be converted into data in an advanced form, I create works that go beyond surface-layer perception to directly interrogate or address people’s perceptions or sensibilities [...] At the foundation of my works is life and the environment that envelops it. The PixCell, Biomatrix, and Prism series are questioning the future of humanity, civilisation, and nature in space.”
Sheung-Koon Siu Bo (Kwong Tung Yuen)
Sheung-Koon Siu Bo (Kwong Tung Yuen), Divine Leg's Battle (comic manuscript page 3), 1978. Modern & Contemporary Art & Design Sale, Hong Kong.
As a narrative art form, comics can be seen to have evolved from ancient murals and traditional East Asian ink paintings to offer immersive visual experiences that instinctively capture our attention, strengthening their enduring appeal.
Bruce Lee by Sheung Koon Siu Bo (Kwong Tung Yuen) is one of the longest-running comic series in Hong Kong’s history. It ushered in the golden age of Hong Kong comics in the 1970s and, with its distinctive narrative style and martial arts spirit, profoundly influenced Asian pop culture during its more than 30-year serialization.
Born in 1945, Kwong began his journey in the comic industry at the age of 11. Rising from an apprenticeship, he became a leading artist at the age of 17 and has produced over a thousand comic works throughout the decades, firmly establishing himself as one of the grandmasters of Hong Kong comics.
Chiharu Shiota
Chiharu Shiota, Connected to the Universe, 2023. Modern & Contemporary Art : Online Auction, Hong Kong.
The Berlin-based Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota is renowned for her large-scale, site-specific installations made up of intricately entangled red and black threads that explore themes of memory and loss, life and death.
An experimental work on paper, Connected to the Universe showcases Shiota’s iconic use of red threads, translating her touchingly monumental vision into an intimately rendered field embraced by varying hues of warmth. In this piece, she navigates the delicate interconnectivity between individual human beings and the broader universe, balancing a sense of fragility with vastness.
Javier Calleja
Javier Calleja, And…do you?, 2021. Modern & Contemporary Art : Online Auction, Hong Kong.
Hailing from Málaga, Spain, Javier Calleja captivates audiences worldwide with his adorable, wide-eyed boy characters. A former apprentice of Yoshitomo Nara, Calleja’s work embraces the nostalgic kawaii aesthetic pioneered by the Japanese artist, while also reflecting influences from the wider genealogy of the “BIG EYE” phenomenon in Japanese manga. However, Calleja’s style remains distinct, illuminating the surreal implications of his characters’ dazzling gazes.
Unlike his larger works, which often overwhelm viewers with the monumental presence of the characters, And…do you? is a diminutive sheet that invites close inspection, fostering a mode of spectatorship rooted in intimacy rather than confrontation.
Yuichi Hirako
Yuichi Hirako, Forest Master II, 2012. Modern & Contemporary Art : Online Auction, Hong Kong.
Japanese artist Yuichi Hirako focuses on environmental issues and deep ecology, continually inviting viewers to reconsider their relationship with nature and the organisms that inhabit our surroundings. Forest Master II exemplifies Hirako’s fantastical vision of the forest. His stylised bold brushstrokes on canvas build up a magical narrative — a fantastic, warm imagination of a nomadic existence in a wintry world, perfectly suited to our mindset this time of year.
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