How Li Hei Di’s Market Is Accelerating—and Why It’s Holding Together

Editor’s note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, art news Newsletter about the art market and beyond. Register here Receive it every Wednesday.

The auction market for some artists feels like an accident—novelty, narrative, or a well-timed sale sparking fleeting interest. There are also artists whose market, even early on, feels like the visible surface of something deeper, slower. Li HeidiBorn in Shenyang, China, in 1997 and currently headquartered in London, he falls into the latter category.

Although Lee’s auction history is still relatively short, the artist has become one of the most talked-about young painters over the past two years, even though most works in the ultra-contemporary category have failed. After becoming the youngest artists on Pace’s roster in September 2024, they began to see the first results at auction, with works from 2021 and 2022 auctioned in Hong Kong and New York that fall. To date, Lee’s works have appeared at auction 12 times, eight of them in Hong Kong. Nearly every appearance exceeded expectations, often decisively. Pictures of conservative estimates—sometimes at levels more consistent with the current caution toward emerging artists—have doubled, and in some cases nearly tripled, their high estimates.

The clearest sign that Lee’s market was more than just a flash in the pan came during Hong Kong’s annual fall sales. Works at Sotheby’s and Phillips both sold for more than double their high estimates. Sotheby’s works, There is a summer that returns again and again; there is a dawn that makes me look old (2023), sold for HK$2.67 million, with an estimate of HK$700,000 to HK$1 million. A new auction record for the artist; their previous record was set at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong in March for about half that figure.

But perhaps more importantly than a record, the painting is a large-scale work in a recent series—precisely the kind of object that tends to anchor long-term price trajectories.

Yang KaiweiVice Chairman and Senior International Expert at Phillips told art news The results should not be interpreted as a sudden spike. “This is not a flash-in-the-pan situation,” Young said. “This is a slow accumulation process. Auction performance reflects the interest that developed over the years before these works hit the market.”

One of the more persistent misconceptions surrounding Lee’s market is that it is narrowly regional, driven primarily by Asian collectors’ response to Chinese-born artists. Auction data, dealers and consultants say otherwise. Auctions and purchases of Lee’s works come from across Asia, Europe and the United States, with collectors in places as diverse as Hong Kong, Seoul, Texas, South Africa and Northern California, Yang said.

“This is not an ‘Asia only’ story,” Yang noted. “Collectors respond to the work first. The background adds depth but does not restrict the viewer.”

Vice President Pace said the same width is also present on the junior side Joshua Friedmanwho has worked with Lee since his early career. Friedman told art news Lee’s collector base includes private collectors on all continents as well as public institutions such as the High Museum of Art, ICA Miami and Hepworth Wakefield in the UK. Foundations in Europe and Asia also acquired works, he added.

The emphasis on institutions is intentional. Friedman said the gallery’s pricing strategy is designed to give museums access to works as demand grows — a concept that is increasingly rare in a market eager to announce winners early. “Once pricing becomes unconstrained,” Friedman said, “it becomes more difficult for institutions to participate. That’s something we’ve been careful about from the beginning.”

While Lee’s practice is often discussed in terms of identity—gender, cultural displacement, self-definition—the work, according to the work, prioritizes feelings over concepts. Jessica PfeifferArt consultant of Fine Arts Group and former Christie’s expert. This makes it extremely flexible in the market. Pfeiffer told art news She successfully presented Lee’s paintings to conservative collectors without mentioning the biography at all. “This work needs no explanation to be compelling,” she said. “It meets people where they are.”

At the same time, collectors who are more deeply involved often find that their works receive sustained attention. Yang said it quite poetically. For her, the paintings are “always in a state of becoming” emotionally, compositionally and symbolically. This openness allows viewers from different cultures to project their own narratives onto the work without diminishing its complexity.

Although there is much discussion about identity, geography and market mechanisms, Lee’s success ultimately lies in the paintings themselves – and these works are difficult to pin down.

At first glance, many of the works appear abstract: fields of luminous color created by thin layers of oil paint. But over time, figures emerge—torsoes, faces, bodies submerge or blend into their surroundings. The images are suspended between figuration and abstraction, as if in transition.

Pace’s Friedman describes the experience of viewing Lee’s work as “almost cinematic,” likening it to staring into water, shapes emerging as the eyes adjust. This slowness is no accident. Lee spent months and even more than a year working on the paintings without preparing sketches. Each mark echoes the previous, creating surfaces that feel cumulative rather than composed.

Pfeiffer recalls seeing Lee’s work shortly after the pandemic began, when many collectors were hungry for substance rather than spectacle. What struck her at the time was how familiar the piece felt, even though it mimicked anything she had never seen. “It feels historically grounded,” she says, “but also feels completely ‘now.’ That’s rare.”

She adds that Lee’s involvement in Chinese fantasy literature and late 20th-century Hong Kong cinema – e.g. green snake(1993)—as a narrative undercurrent rather than a literal reference. These paintings do not tell stories, but they are stories themselves. The body becomes an emotional site rather than an identity marker, filled with desire, memory, and ambiguity.

Lee’s market is clearly accelerating. In just over a year, 12 works have appeared at auction, which is a significant number for an artist born in 1997 and shows that demand has gone far beyond the primary market. Interestingly, most of these are strong recent releases, which suggests the market is testing how fast it can run without completely imploding.

Lee’s first solo exhibition with Pace will be held in New York this fall; it will be accompanied by a publication from Pace Publishing. This show will be followed by a show at Pace in Hong Kong in the near future and a show at the Pond Society in Shanghai that will close at the end of the year.

The key question is whether Lee’s collecting base will expand without losing consistency. So far, the signs are encouraging. Institutional interest is growing. Auction results are consistent and mostly incremental. Perhaps most importantly, the work itself is difficult to digest.

I have a theory that markets built on difficulty—markets built on paintings that require viewers to slow down rather than scroll past—tend to last longer than markets built on instant legibility and Instagram. The market for Lee Heidi is still young and still forming, and it looks like it may be building a foundation that will require people to stick with it for a while.