Why Is There So Much Weird, Freaky Art at Art Basel Hong Kong 2017?

Things are getting real weird at the Art Basel Hong Kong fair this week. Take, for example, the fleshy, too-real sculptures by the Australian artist Patricia Piccinini: a squat, furry monkey atop two patchy legs, or a lifelike, frizzy-haired woman who could easily be a work by another unsettling Australian sculptor, Ron Mueck, except she’s a nestling a sad sack of flesh that appears to have escaped the Garden of Earthly Delights.

Piccinini’s oddball creations aren’t the only artworks showing hyperrealistic skin: with “Summit,” the Chinese artist Shen Shaomin arranged a hypothetical meeting between five of the world’s most infamous communist leaders—or, at least the lifeless bodies of Fidel Castro, Mao Zedong, Kim Il-sung, Ho Chi Minh, and Lenin.

From Castro on a gurney to Pikachu-like yellow rats that the Japanese collective Chim↑Pom taxidermied after capturing them with a fishing net, try not to look away from all the strange fruit from the fair on Instagram, here.

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