Why innovative metallic artworks are taking centre stage

From Christopher K. Ho’s brass sculptures to Subodh Gupta’s recontextualised utensils, innovative metal art find utility beyond function

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Published: 10:00am, 2 Apr 2025

Considering metal as an artistic statement or as a functional material may not have come at a better time as the Hong Kong government recently announced that the city’s iconic bamboo scaffolds will be replaced by metal in future construction projects.

Metal in art is often associated with modern, industrial and urban themes, leaning closer to the fields of architecture or design than what one might call fine art, which focuses on the more artisanally used paints, papers and ceramic.

There’s good reason for this – art pieces using industrial materials like Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (1917) were evocative because of their functional origins. Historically, metal was used in churches, sculpture and large relief works for its shine and durability. Metal lines in trains and skyscrapers in the art deco style, or as structural accents in brutalism lent aesthetic substance to an otherwise functional structure.

Christopher K. Ho’s 2023 piece Return to Order on display at Art Basel Hong Kong 2025. Photo: Handout

However, visitors to Art Basel Hong Kong this year were able to take in a handful of works that give a modern sense of how to work metal into aesthetic expression. The largest-scale work of note might just have been Christopher K. Ho’s Return to Order (2022-23), presented by local gallery Property Holdings Development Group. Part of the Alteration section of this year’s Encounters project, it is a series of sleek, golden-coloured brass sculptures with roots in architecture.

An architect by training, Ho took an exercise by American architect John Hejduk, in which a nine by nine grid is complicated by morphing one square at a time, and designed each sculpture digitally before taking those renderings and milling the sculptures out of brass. In many ways, the work feels like a contemporary take on metal sculpting with modernist sensibilities. The shapes are abstract and Rorschach-esque, appearing different as the observer circles them. They evoke “a visionary’s model for a golden city or the trophy collection of a decorated movie star”.

Sculptural pieces are the main application for metal in art, though artists have been pushing their expression in recent years. Leeahn Gallery presented works by Paris-based South Korean artist Yoon-Hee, who was born in Seoul in 1950. Works from her Projeté (2018-20) sculpture series use aluminium to freeze what appears to be liquid in motion, a testament to her intention towards the organic in her art.