This year, Art Basel Hong Kong is richer than ever: young artists testing new materials, established names reworking tradition, and plenty of works that reward close looking. Whether you are building a collection from scratch or adding a considered piece, these highlights should be considered.

UNDER USD 10,000

Jonas Lund, The Future of Growth, 2026
Office Impart, Berlin
Zero 10

There is something satisfying about AI being used to poke fun at itself. In the short film The Future of Growth (2026), Swedish artist Jonas Lund uses AI-generated video to stage a series of speculative and satirical scenes set in our data-obsessed age. The dystopian 21-minute video moves through loosely connected vignettes: singles lament online dating when compatibility is hyper-quantified, and a therapy patient wonders whether AI might give better advice than her mother.

Hyun Nahm, Twins, 2021
Whistle, Seoul
Echoes

When Hyun Nahm starts a sculpture, he lets chemistry have a say. Working with reactive materials such as epoxy resin, cement, and polystyrene, the South Korean artist allows chemical combinations to determine his works’ final forms. Often, the sculptures look like mini landscapes or pieces of decaying infrastructure. In Twins (2021), two towering structures rise side by side, their metal frameworks overtaken by a crust of pink resin.

Ryu Takeda, canopic, 2026
The Green Gallery, Milwaukee
Discoveries

A paintbrush does many jobs: it can apply color, move it around, or scrape it away. Japanese artist Ryu Takeda embraces every potential of the tool. Comparing painting to the act of excavation, Takeda tackles his surfaces with strokes, smears, and layered marks, allowing forms to appear and fade as he works. In canopic (2026), strokes of deep blue and black sweep across a pale ground. The painting’s title adds another layer, recalling the ancient Egyptian jars once used to preserve human organs.

UNDER USD 25,000

Kevin Abosch, Testing Ground (g43.270), 2025
TAEX, Vilnius
Zero 10

Years ago, Kevin Abosch was an Irish biologist experimenting with early AI to visualize lab samples. These days, he is a conceptual artist using modern generative tools to tweak and rework images in what he calls ‘a process of revision and adjustment.’ Some of his latest works resemble familiar landscapes: Testing Ground (g43.270) (2025), with its striking pattern of dark pools and white fields, looks like a bird’s-eye view of an industrial reservoir

Akiko Kinugawa, Belong, 2026
Anomaly, Tokyo
Echoes

Akiko Kinugawa paints slowly, building her images by rubbing thin layers of oil into the canvas with a cloth. That process gives her work an ethereal look, defined by soft shapes and hazy edges. Inspired by nature and spiritualism, the New York–born, Tokyo-based artist’s recent abstract works often explore ideas of connection and exchange. In Belong (2026), two mirrored forms are linked by gentle lines suggesting an embrace.

Brilant Milazimi, Who talks first?, 2024
Isabella Ritter, Pristina
Discoveries

Brilant Milazimi’s paintings explore the psychological hangover of recent Kosovar history. The artist, who will represent his country at the Venice Biennale this year, was born in the 1990s during the region’s conflicts, and now translates the uneasy aftermath of war into dreamlike, visceral scenes. In Who talks first? (2024), four figures gather around a table, their faces glowing hot pink. It is a tense meeting where no one quite seems ready to begin.

Under USD 50,000

Lain Singh Bangdel, Kathmandu Valley, 1963
Tansbao Gallery, Taipei
Insights

Often considered the father of Modern Nepali painting, Lain Singh Bangdel spent the 1950s in London and Paris, taking in all the Modern art he could find. When he returned to Nepal in 1961, the paintings he made balanced Western abstraction with a deep affection for the landscape he came home to. In Kathmandu Valley (1963), a patchwork of jewel-toned houses is pictured among soft rolling hills, while a distant Himalayan peak rises in the background.

Albrecht Schnider, Landschaft, 2026
Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin
Kabinett

Rather than representing nature literally, the Swiss artist Albrecht Schnider builds it from simplified blocks of color. In Landschaft (2026), hills and valleys appear as puzzle-like shapes across the canvas. Free from any weather or human life, the scene is a neutral space – less a depiction of a landscape than an idea of one.

UNDER USD 100,000

Miwa Kyusetsu XIII, El Capitan IX, 2024
Kosaku Kanechika, Tokyo
Insights

For more than 350 years, the Miwa family has produced Hagi ware in Japan, helping develop the milky white glaze that defines the ceramic tradition. Miwa Kazuhiko, the third son of Miwa Kyusetsu XI, was not expected to inherit the family title, which left him free to branch out on his own. But when, in 2019, he unexpectedly stepped into that role, assuming the name Miwa Kyusetsu XIII, he brought his experiences back to the centuries-old craft. In the ‘El Capitan’ series, Miwa cuts into clay with a Japanese sword, leaving rugged surfaces exposed beneath the white glaze his family helped perfect.

UNDER USD 250,000

Xu Hualing, The Mountain Seen 2, 2024
Lin & Lin Gallery, Taipei
Kabinett

At first glance, the silk watercolor The Mountain Seen 2 (2024) might read like a misty landscape, its green gradients suggesting the contours of distant hills. But look closer, and the ‘hills’ reveal themselves as female figures draped beneath translucent veils. Trained in traditional gongbi painting, Chinese artist Xu Hualing often returns to images of young women, using delicate washes of pigment to render their bodies in soft, atmospheric layers.