At ART SG, Top Sale Hits $650 K. Amid Deepening Focus on Southeast Asia

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ART SG, Southeast Asia’s largest international art fair, concluded its 2026 edition at Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands Resort and Convention Center on Sunday, with reported sales volumes that were strong but still unable to match last year’s $1.2 million in sales for a Pablo Picasso work.

Still, blue-chip galleries are doing well. Highest Auction Price for Thaddaeus Ropac: Work by Raqib Shaw, The Decline of the Jade Kingdom I – Paradise Lost Chapter 2 (2014-2023), priced at £475,000 (approximately $650,000), and Antony Gormley’s Group 7 (2024) £450,000. The gallery also sells works by David Salle, Joan Snyder, Lee Kangso, Tom Sachs and Oliver Beer, among others.

Just hours into preview, White Cube reports on placement of £225,000 Marguerite Humeau sculpture and Michael Armitage 1: Judgment (2025) US$280,000; both held by a collector in Singapore. The gallery also sold works by Danh Vo (€280,000) and Raqib Shaw (£275,000), as well as three gunpowder works on canvas by Cai Guo-Qiang, which sold for $120,000 each (Cai recently had an exhibition at the gallery’s Bermondsey location), and two works by Ibrahim Mahama, which sold for €100,000 each.

Among Asian galleries, South Korea’s Johyun Gallery had the strongest performance. Its exhibition of Lee Bae’s works was sold, with a cumulative transaction volume of US$2.76 million. The Asia Art Center, which is based in China and Taiwan, said works at the Ju Ming and Li Chen booths were almost sold out, with prices ranging from $70,000 to $400,000.

“You see most [of attendees] They are all local collectors,” White Cube Asia managing director Wendy Xu told us art news. “Singapore is the heart of Southeast Asia. So we’re seeing collectors from Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, China and Hong Kong.”

In fact, the show attracted 43,000 visitors over four days and featured a star-studded cast including leading Asian collectors such as Agnes Lew and Fernando Zobel de Ayala; art news Top 200 collectors Lonti Ebers, Belinda Tanoto and Purat Osanthanugrah recently celebrated the opening of Dib Bangkok; as well as directors and curators from Sharjah Art Foundation, Yuz Museum in Shanghai, Rockbund Museum in Shanghai, Sunpride Foundation in Hong Kong, MACAN Museum in Jakarta, Sydney Art Space and many more.

“A lot of organic events are really starting to take root in Singapore in a really fun and exciting way,” ART SG co-founder Magnus Renfrew said at the show’s opening press conference. “The energy is really high. International visitors really enjoy meeting here and discovering the great things that Singapore itself has to offer, and importantly, it’s also a key gathering point for Southeast Asia.”

But the focus at the show was primarily on Southeast Asia and the development of its local art scene. In his opening remarks, fair director Yang Shuyin said ART SG has played a meaningful role in transforming Southeast Asia “from an underrepresented region to one recognized and supported by many loyal collectors and strong galleries.” She added that the exhibition upholds the concept of bringing Southeast Asia to the world and the world to Southeast Asia.

This focus is evident in the fair’s decision to partner for the first time with SEA Focus, a long-running boutique art fair that also runs during Singapore Art Week. In its fourth edition, ART SG, SEA Focus operates as a show within a show at Marina Bay Sands, curated by John ZW Tung, with the 2026 theme of “The Humane Agency”. “Art allows us to feel, empathize, and in the process allows us to chart our own path forward as a humanity,” Tong said at a press conference opening the fair. “I think all these artworks in SEAFocus offer suggestions for humanity and a better future.” The platform selected 16 galleries with a clear focus on Southeast Asian art, with the most notable participant being Silverlens, which has offices in New York and Manila.

“Singapore’s strength is bringing people together from all over the world,” said Silverlens founder Isa Lorenzo, whose gallery previously operated out of Singapore Arts Center Gillman Barracks, is participating in SEA Focus for the fifth time. “The market is more institutionalized. It’s more museums, foundations, curators — part of the art support system. It’s not so much a private collector market.”

Also at SEA Focus, Indonesian artist Arahmaiani Feisal, known for her community practice and decades-long self-exile, presents a series of flags with the ISA Gallery in Jakarta. The works feature words chosen by different communities in their respective languages, including “resistance” in Indonesian and “happiness” in Chinese. Deborah Iskander, president and director of ISA Art Museum, who is participating in ART SG for the third time, said: “This is very encouraging because there are a lot of people interested in Southeast Asian art now.” art news.

The rest of the fair is divided into a main gallery section, a focus section for single-artist showcases, and a future section, which focuses on galleries established within the past decade and launching $. In the main section, Los Angeles-based Commonwealth and Council shared a booth with Shanghai-based Antenna Space. Commonwealth and Council presents a collection of works by Lotus L. Kang, including stainless steel mixing bowls filled with cast-aluminum Asian pears, lotus roots, kelp knots and other shapes, as well as acrylic and ink works by Rosha Yaghmai. Antenna Space displays an oil painting of a window and pays homage to Georgia O’Keeffe and Agnes Martin, both artists by Evelyn Wang Taocheng.

“Asia continues to be a very important growing market and art world,” said Kibum Kim, co-director and partner at Commonwealth and Council. art news. “This year seems to be a great moment in Singapore, with all the different types of institutional projects opening up in Southeast Asia.”

Medellin’s Galería Duque Arango is one of several galleries participating for the first time, bringing works by hometown hero the late Fernando Botero. Prices range from $95,000 for a 2008 painting to $2.95 million for a 1997 painting a family— the most expensive work at the show. The gallery also displays two works by Olga de Amaral, including a seven-panel work in linen, plaster, acrylic and gold leaf valued at $825,000. By the time the show opened, the gallery had received two offers, one for a work by Sair García and another for a work by Ariel Cabrera.

“We have a lot of friends in Singapore,” Miguel Duque, a second-generation partner at the gallery, told us art news. “Singapore is a booming market. They appreciate art. They also love Latin American art. So we thought we had to come here.”

New Delhi-based Nature Morte is participating for the first time through South Asia Insights in partnership with Indian motorcycle company TVS. The gallery sold three works by Singapore Biennale participant Ayesha Singh for a total of about $36,000. Juhi Sharma, deputy sales director of Nature Morte, said: “Singapore is an international metropolis. There are many wealthy Indians who immigrated from India and have lived in Singapore for generations. It is also a financial capital.” art news. “There are a lot of people here and I think they are definitely interested in South Asian art.”

On the second day of the show, Toronto’s Patel Brown (another first-time exhibitor in the futures space) showed works by Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka (whose tapestries were a hit at the show last fall), Shaheer Zazai and Filipino-Canadian artist Marigold Santos. Santos’ paintings and etchings depict aswanThe shape-shifting figure from Philippine folklore wins the Future Award. As of that day, 15 of the 16 ink-on-marble works on paper priced at $2,500 had been sold.

“She just found out because her time zone is Calgary, Canada,” gallery partner Gareth Brown told us art news. “She’s happy.”

German gallery neugerriemschneider is one of the few galleries to participate in both ART SG and SEA Focus. The former displays works by Yang Haige, Ai Weiwei, Tomas Saraceno, and Olafur Eliasson; the latter displays a three-channel video installation created by Ho Tzu Nyen in 2021.

“They have different DNA,” said gallery co-founder Tim Neuger art newsexplaining the differences between the shows. “There is a dialogue between them. If you look closely at SEA Focus, it is more like a curated exhibition supported by different galleries, whereas ART SG is a classic art fair.”

If there’s one thing that the fourth ART SG made clear, it’s that the city is no longer just hosting the region’s art world, but is actively shaping it. With strong early sales, growing institutional participation and growing confidence in Southeast Asian voices and global blue-chip brands, ART SG continues to solidify its role as a key convening point for the Asian art community.