Your ultimate guide to Art Central 2025

This year’s fair is its largest-ever programme to date, presenting over 108 galleries and 500 artists, from established galleries and world-famous artists, to newer spaces and a younger generation of artistic talents. Among these features, Art Central has also added new sectors and focal points to this year’s offerings.

Curated by Enoch Cheng, the brand-new Legend programme presents works from artists born before 1970. These are artistic pioneers whose works and legacies continue to shape global art movements today, and six distinguished artists from the Asia-Pacific region have been selected for representation.

These include Japanese painter Ay-O, one of the most celebrated artists to emerge from Japan’s post-war period and well-known for his rainbow-hued pieces; Japanese photographer and filmmaker Eikoh Hosoe, with his signature surrealist, avant-garde style; and painter Emily Kame Kngwarray from the Utopia community in central Australia. Also featured in Legend is Busan artist Lee In Seob, who draws inspiration from the nature surrounding his studio in the forested Gangwon province of South Korea; leading avant-garde artist Dean-E Mei from Taiwan, who explores identity and political ideology through mixed media installations; and Hong Kong’s very own May Fung, lauded for her influential video work and media art.

Aside from the Legend gallery feature, this year’s Art Central will also see the debut of Duo Projects. Art is always derivative, and plenty of artists’ work bounces off of each other’s within artistic movements, so the fair is highlighting this creative connectivity by pairing artists within a shared curated space.

For example, Latvian artist Andris Eglītis is presented with Parisian-Crimean artist Dimitri Kosiré for their abstract, non-figurative approaches and material-driven installations. The dizzying kaleidoscopic effect of Eunjeong Choi’s illusionary paintings is contrasted with Sooyeon Bang’s largely monochromatic body of paintings that are so detailed they almost appear to be photographs. Take your time to look through the pairings in the Duo Projects sector and see what deeper understandings of each artist’s work you might find.

Art Central 2025 will also see a special focus on photography, highlighting this important medium that’s increasingly being valued among younger collectors in Asia. These will not be grouped together into a photo-specific zone, so as you make your way through the fair, look out for works by renowned director and cinematographer Chung Mong Hong and Netherlands-based Lo Sheng-wen at Avocado Art Lab, the award-winning Huang Xiaoliang and the late American photographer Jerry Uelsmann at see+ Gallery, and more.

The milestone 10th edition of Art Central is made all the more special by their video art programme curated by Aaditya Sathish. Themed around the ways we can access people and information and create new worlds, this sector aims to shake up viewers’ everyday logic and reasoning, and will be presented in Cinema Central, a dedicated video theatre for moving images in the heart of this year’s fair.

A selection of works from Akeroyd Collection will be on show, courtesy of the library of Hong Kong-based philanthropist Shane Akeroyd. For one hour each day of the fair, visitors can pop by Cinema Central to experience these exclusive showings of moving image works.

We’re also particularly interested in Kary Kwok’s piece for the fair, titled You Don’t Know Me, But… (1998). Visual artist Kwok has always produced works that explore sexuality, race, and identity, foregrounding marginalised bodies and challenging what society proclaims are the norm. There’s also The Bicyclist Who Fell Into a Time-Cone by the New Delhi-based Raqs Media Collective, an energetic exploration of time that seesaws between fiction and reality.

Lastly, Art Central’s Performance programme will see the addition of the all-new Lecture-performance. This increasingly popular art form is essentially research-based performances presented through text, images, and movement. For the fair, the selection of lecture-performances is themed around seeking the miraculous in the mundane, or grounded in some kind of search that invites audiences in.

Keep an eye out in particular for Charmaine Poh’s piece featuring vocal clones, anime characters, and techno-orientalism; IV Chan’s examination of characters like vampires and mothers in campy B-movies; and Shavonne Wong’s experiment on the emotional and ethical questions that come up when AI examines relationships.

We’ve already mentioned many artists and works to check out, enough to keep you occupied through your time at Art Central. But don’t leave without paying a visit to the newly commissioned large-scale installation by Hong Kong artist Nadim Abbas. Inspired by the architectural drawings of Italian designer Andrea Branzi, Abbas reworks Branzi’s unrealised visions into modular forms that interact with the flow of visitors in the fair like complex set pieces.

If you’re still hankering for more recommendations, then check out Shunpudo Gallery’s post-war to present-day Japanese art with rare pieces by Junzo Watanabe, Tomoo Gokita, and Kazumi Nakamura, as well as Karin Weber Gallery’s selection of Hong Kong artists such as Joey Leung, Kensa Hung, and more. Avocado Art Lab’s Art Central debut features four internationally acclaimed photographers, while Gallery Claire Corcia from Paris presents contemporary French, Italian, and Argentinian artists.

Available until March 25, purchase advance tickets to Art Central at special prices, ranging from $220 for weekday entry to $400 for admission to the one-evening-only Night Central festivities.