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Recycled jeans raise $232,000

Christies 24 May 2008 Contemporary Asian Art sale in Hong Kong
Records were tumbling at the Christie’s auction of contemporary Asian art in Hong Kong on 24 May. As was to be expected, most attention (and cash) was focused on Chinese artists, but auction records were also set for individual artists from Indonesia, India and South Korea.

One of the Korean artists featured was Choi So-young (b 1980), who has a show coming up at the Union Gallery later this year. Choi specialises in creating panoramic landscapes out of recycled denim. Her 3 metre wide City (2002) was sold for the equivalent of USD232,714.

Choi So-young: City (2002)
Choi So-young: City (2002). Denim, 300 x 150 cm. Image: © Christie’s Images Ltd

The Union Gallery are still collecting your old jeans to be transformed into Choi’s next creation. See here for details.

Other artists whose work was sold last week were as follows:

  • Hong Kyoung Tack (b 1968), whose colourful Library II (1995-2001) raised USD588,000 (just beating the top end estimate by 10%, and setting a new record for the artist)
  • Kim Tschang Yeul (b 1929), whose peaceful large scale oil Water Drops (1981) raised USD542,000
  • Kim Dong Yoo (b 1965), whose pixellated Diana (2007) (created out of countless images of her mother-in-law’s face) raised USD294,000
  • Chun Kwang Young (b 1944), whose sculptural hanji creation Aggregation 06-AP016 (2006) raised USD279,000 (more or less doubling the pre-sale estimate)

Links:

Image credits: Christie’s Images Ltd

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