Kukje Gallery presents artworks by two international artists: Haegue Yang and Daniel Boyd, in the ‘Encounter’ sector of 2024 Art Basel Hong Kong. Haegue Yang’s Contingent Spheres will be on display in the center of the fairgrounds, while Daniel Boyd’s installation Doan will welcome visitors at the Pacific Place, a large shopping complex near the fairgrounds, as part of the off-site Encounters.

Encounters, curated by Alexie Glass-Kantor, Executive Director of Artspace Sydney, will feature 16 large-scale projects by artists from a broad spectrum of geographies, under the theme ‘I am a part of all that I have met’. The sector will include 11 works made especially for the fair, a yet-unmatched number since the sector’s introduction in 2013.

One of the participating works, Haegue Yang’s Contingent Spheres, stems from the artist’s thoughts on the aftermath of the recent global pandemic, cultural differences between regions, and climate change. The title, ‘Contingent Spheres,’ alludes to the local cycles of the seasons, which are usually regular, and consists of two groups of sculptures that seem to be representative of three different environments (undersea, terrestrial, and celestial or extraterrestrial).

A pair of rattan sculptures, The Randing Intermediate – Underbelly Alienage Duo, and The Intermediate – Five-Legged Frosty Fecund Imoogi, form a scene. The independent entities form a single scene called ‘Contingent Spheres’, each sharing a common language of production, the handcrafted weaving of rattan and straw grass. The sculptural objects weave a fantastical narrative that is both grounded in, and transcends, their individual local cultural environments, and as a group they embody the hybrid concept of ‘natureculture’ in form and fabrication.

Co-organized by three of the artist’s exclusive galleries (Kukje Gallery (Seoul), Kurimanzutto (Mexico City, New York), and Galerie Chantal Crousel (Paris)), the project also signals to take another leap forward with “Leap Year,” a survey exhibition at Hayward Gallery in London scheduled for October.