Bloomberg gets exhuberant over Christie’s solid painting results in Hong Kong. With five painting sales completed for a total of  $48 million, including one sale–Asian Contemporary and 20th Century Chinese Painting Evening Sale–that doubled the pre-sale estimate to make $23.4m and was 89% sold by lot.

“The results speak for themselves,” Michael Wang, chief executive of My Humble House Art Space and one of Asia’s top art collectors, said in an interview at the sale. “It’s a huge success. This auction tells me the slump in Asia’s artworks has ended.”

Here’s a breakdown of the sales so far:

• Southeast Asian Paintings: $2.6m with 72 out of 97 lots (74%) sold. Masriadi, Affandi, Rudy Montofani and Agus Suwage all sold works in the top ten lots. The top five lots were in the low six figures.
• 20th Century Chinese Day Sale made $7.7m with 57 out of 74 lots sold or 77%. Zao Wou-ki and Chen Yifei dominated the top ten.
• Asian Contemporary Day sale totalled $5.3m with 122 lots sold out of 160 offered (76%). Half of the top ten works were sold to European (or American) private buyers.
• Fine Chinese Modern Paintings sale brought in $8.9m with 77% of the 207 lots offered finding buyers for a total of 160 lots sold.

Hong Kong Art Sale Beats Estimate as Bidders Bet Slump Is Over (Bloomberg)