Keong Ruoh Ling

Founder, KRL Art Advisory

Keong Ruoh Ling joined Christie’s in 1996 as a junior specialist of the very young department of Modern and Contemporary Southeast Asian Art, becoming the head of department in 2000. She later set up at Present in 2016 that aspires to present thoughtfully curated exhibitions with a playful twist or an experimental edge by contemporary Southeast Asian artists. At Present organised its first exhibition Paper Matters by a group of contemporary Filipino artists in October 2016 at Singapore’s Gillman Barrack. Lemniscate, which is a solo show by the young Indonesian artist Syaiful Garibaldi from Bandung, was the 2nd exhibition in 2018 organised under the entity of at Present and in partnership with Mindset Art Center in Taipei and ROH Project in Jakarta. In 2022 at Present was renamed KRL Art Advisory and curated the solo exhibition of Albert Yonathan, an Indonesian contemporary artist based out of Tokyo, in partnership with Mindset Art Center, Taipei.

Ruoh Ling regularly writes and lectures on Southeast Asian modern and contemporary art in English and Chinese. Since 2016, Ruoh Ling has been invited to join the panel of independent evaluators of Singapore National Heritage Board and has been regularly providing evaluation service of visual art for the National Gallery of Singapore, Singapore Art Museum and the Asian Civilisations Museum of Singapore.

One of two large inflatable yellow ducks named “Double Ducks” by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman is seen at Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong, China on 12 June 2023. (Isaac Lawrence/AFP)

Culture

From East to West: Hong Kong art auction market's changing taste in the internet age

By Keong Ruoh Ling 25 Aug 2023

From establishing itself as a congregation of all and a cross pollination of buyers and art, the Hong Kong auction market has matured since 2000. It went from highlighting Asian art and artists to internationalising and conflating East and West, and then becoming a marketplace for a “curated” Asian palate with a huge appetite for Western contemporary works. The market has always ruled, and as the pace of life quickens and social media permeates daily life, so has the need for novelty and peer recognition increased.