Two exhibitions in one weekend? While nothing can compete with the expensive Art Basel show for fame, Art Central’s free show certainly competes for size and quality. Join the crowd at Contemporary by Angela Li to get immersed in Chan Wai Lap’s installation The Lonesome Changing Room (2021), featuring a live performance by an actor (Wai Lok Chan) getting changed after swimming, surrounded by slowly rotating plastic ice cream cones.

Irreverence and pop humour abound: the most popular offering at Galerie Koo appears to be C. H. Wong’s Cover Story Series (2021), featuring self-portraits of the naked artist imitating everyone from Carrie Lam to Adolf Hitler.  At Avenue Des Arts, Matt Gondek’s massive, apocalyptic canvases blind the viewer with fluorescent colour and comic characters.

On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, at Chung Dum Central Galleries Cleon Peterson’s stark black-and-white canvases Junkie (2019) and Park Ave (2019) see decaying, naked drug abusers transformed into Soviet-style superhuman figures.

There is a lot of abstract work to admire, besides: Whitestone Gallery leads with Jiang Miao’s giant, swirling, Taoist Trinity and the Self No. 31 (2020).  There’s also all kinds of sculpture and video installations, and even furniture, like Ettore Sottsass’ Casablanca (1981) and Shiro Kuramata’s Nikko (1982) at Novalis Contemporary Art Design. You won’t want to leave.

Showing 20 — 23 May 2021 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centrein Wan Chai.