Christie’s Hong Kong sales cycle begins in just a couple of weeks. Regional news outlets are beginning to pay attention like this Jose Joya painting that made a splash last year:

In May 2013, Jose Joya’s abstraction “East Meets West” fetched HK $150,000 (US $19,416) at an auction in Christie’s Hong Kong. A year later, his works attracted more bidders who waged in the million-Hong Kong dollar range. “Homage,” a simple abstraction of gray sands and red skies, racked up to a record HK $5,440,000 (US $704,778) for the late artist.

Zineng Wang, Christie’s vice president and art specialist of Asian contemporary and modern art, showed the graphs of the dramatic leap in the sales of Joya’s works.

“Jose Joya is more popular (to) the collecting public,” said Zineng. “He has shown extreme development in the last few years.” […]

He added that there is more representation of Philippine art in Hong Kong as a result of regionalization. In the past 15 years, more arts events have cropped up in Southeast Asia. “Art fairs and auctions play a big part in reshaping art in the regional context,” said Zineng.

Christie’s takes note of Filipino artists leading regional auctions (Inquirer lifestyle)