Is Singapore threatening Hong Kong as next Asian art mecca? Wall Street Journal

SINGAPORE AND HONG KONG’S COMPETING ART MARKET

Singapore’s art scene has grown rapidly since its 1989 government mandate to recognize the “importance of culture and the art.” Thriving to a point that, according to The Wall Street Journal, Hong Kong–Asia’s epicenter of art–is beginning to take its competitor seriously.

Hong Kong’s challenging art scene

Today’s numbers would suggest that Hong Kong has nothing to worry about for competition.  Hong Kong is currently the third-largest auction market in the world with both Christie’s and Sotheby’s in its territory, and has set aside close to US$3 billion in order to create a much needed world class arts and culture development known as West Kowloon Cultural District. The project, however, has been slow to start and left many frustrated.

“The Hong Kong government first hit upon the idea in 1998 of building an integrated arts and culture neighborhood on 40 hectares of reclaimed land in the West Kowloon district. After many fits and starts, planning for the project recently picked up some momentum…Nevertheless, even if it all goes as planned, the first phase won’t be open until 2016.”

One of the proposed models for the West Kowoon Cultural Centre

The West Kowloon project has been “frustrating and painful,” says Asia Art Archive’s Ms. Hsu, who is also on the advisory panel for the museum at the new West Kowloon development. “For the public it has looked like the government is stalling, but it gives me a lot of hope. The government is very concerned about getting it right.’”

Singapore makes its move

The time spent behind making Hong Kong’s “necessary cultural move” may eventually result in Singapore gaining ground in the market by the country’s pushing ahead with so many art-hub projects of their own.

“It [Singapore] invested more than US$1 billion in infrastructure, including several museums and a 4,000-seat complex of theaters, studios and concert halls called the Esplanade, which opened in 2002, and spiced up its arts programming with diversity and a regional flavor.”

The Esplanade, Singapore

The benefits of Singapore’s art initiatives are already apparent. According to Singapore’s National Arts Council “between 1997 and 2007, the ‘vibrancy’ of the local art scene, measured by the number of performances and exhibition days, quadruped to more than 26,000.”

However, Singapore is still missing a key ingredient to perhaps prosper further: a big art-auction market like Hong Kong’s.

“Some smaller art-auction houses hold sales in Singapore, but the big ones — Christie’s and Sotheby’s — have pulled out and moved their Southeast Asian art auctions to Hong Kong, the former British colony that is home to seven million people and became a Chinese territory in 1997.”

For a city, having the ingredients for a thriving art market creates a virtuous circle. The powerful marketing machines of the big auction houses, including public previews of coming sales, raises awareness and appreciation of art in the community. All this encourages local artists to create more art. And that momentum, in turn, contributes to the development of a city’s broader cultural scene, including music, theater and design.”

Singapore looks ahead

The relationship between big art-auction markets and a thriving art scene can be so entangled that it would appear difficult to navigate a new course in order to adequately compete. Singapore, it seems, is trying anyways.

“Undaunted, Singapore is diligently pushing ahead and has opened several museums and other arts venues while Hong Kong has dithered on the construction of West Kowloon. Christie’s also recently picked Singapore to be the site of a global fine-arts storage facility to open in a duty-free zone in January.”

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• Liquidity propels prices, Chinese Political Pop is back- Sothebys Contemporary Asian Art Auction 2009 Hong Kong- October 2009

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Contemporary art market in Asia now bigger than US for first time says Artprice

ASIAN ART MARKET

Visitors enter a Sotheby's auction room in Hong Kong for a sale of modern and contemporary art on October 6, 2008.

For the first time ever, the total auction revenue from “contemporary art in Asia” is greater than the total of the United States artprice reports. The statistics are collected from a 12-month period spanning from July 2008 to June 2009. Asia generated €130 million versus the United States’ €123 million. China is the highest gainer out of this trend, having generated €95 million from contemporary art during the same period.  According to the report, this means China is continuing to “hold on to its third place global geographical art auction revenue ranking.”

The establishment of foreign auction houses such as Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Bonhams in Hong Kong, in combination with the financial strength of Hong Kong and Shanghai are to be accredited for China’s position. For those who are looking to begin collecting Asian art, this does not mean that the price of contemporary Chinese art is back up to its sky-high prices of a couple of years ago. Artprice’s report tell us that in the first half of 2008 the average price of contemporary works sold in China was $65,500, however, in the first half of 2009, this average dropped to $26,800.

Related posts:

• Liquidity propels prices, Chinese Political Pop is back- Sotheby’s Contemporary Asian Art Auction 2009 Hong Kong- October 2009
• Trends and opportunities in the contemporary photography market- October 2009
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Subscribe to Art Radar Asia for more market and auction house news

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Why do critics like Zhang Huan but not his show? Live pigs installation at White Cube 2009 – review roundup

CHINESE ANIMAL INSTALLATION ART REVIEW

Zhang Huan is known for his performance acts of physical and psychological endurance. This time, however, he left that act up to a couple of pigs.

Zhang Huan’s first show at White Cube

Zhang’s first exhibition Zhu Gangqiang at the White Cube Gallery in London (to October 3rd 2009) featured two live pigs in a make shift pigpen. The pig duo were intended by Zhang to stand in for a remarkable pig in China that survived for 49 days under debris after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake that killed more than 60,000 people.  Now known as the “Zhu Gangqiang” or “Cast-Iron Pig”, the rescued pig has subsequently achieved celebrity status in China for its miraculous tale of survival.  

Zhang’s exhibition was to pay homage to the remarkable Cast-Iron Pig; critics, however, found the exhibition wanting.  For some, the live pig production was far less impressive than Zhang’s portraits of human skulls and the Cast-Iron Pig that comprised the rest of the exhibition. Here is a selection of their reviews:

Zhang Huan, Zhu Gangqiang, 2009 (installation view) Two Oxford Sandy and Black gilts, straw, wood, plants, soil, DVD projection, DVD, plasma screen, sound and vinyl

Just a headline grabber

Mark Hudson, writing in The London Daily Telegraph, speaking on behalf of London audiences, declared that large-scale ‘playful’ exhibitions like Zhang’s are no longer inspiring to local audiences:  “We’ve grown so used to headline-grabbing fun-art installations,” he writes, “that Zhang’s pigs feel like just another addition to a list that includes Carsten Holler’s slides in Tate Modern and Antony Gormley’s plinth project in Trafalgar Square.”  

For Hudson, the highlight of the show was Zhang’s depictions of the rescued pig made out of burnt incense rather than the live pigs in the pigpen-utopia (where the pigs appear to have plenty of straw, a football and tire to play with, and exotic plants to eat).

The pig portraits demonstrate the most interesting aspect of Zhang’s work to the Western audience, which is, according to Hudson, his “ambivalence with which he blurs Eastern and Western traditions. The way he offsets strategies borrowed — apparently — from Western operator-artists such as Joseph Beuys and Jeff Koons with scarcely fathomable Oriental philosophy is refreshing in a contemporary art scene in which much has become painfully predictable.” 

Hudson concludes the review by cautioning Zhang not to fall into the trend of artists who have exhibited at the White Cube (such as artist Damien Hirst) and have since become “brand over content.”  According to Hudson, the current prices and high profile of Zhang’s exhibition demonstrates that he “may already be in danger of losing his value as a voice from elsewhere.”

Zhang Huan, Zhu Gangqiang, 2009- Ash on linen

 

The London Evening Standard’s Brian Sewell, however, disagrees: “I think him [Zhang Huan] a better, wiser and more contemplative artist than…these Western models.”

Tate Modern berated

Sewell’s review describes Zhang’s remarkable and prolific history of performance art works and details the symbolic force they have had on audiences.  He emphasizes Zhang’s mystical mastery of his work and goes so far as to berate the Tate Modern for not yet having acquired any of Zhang’s work for their permanent collection.

Unfortunately, the glowing description of Zhang’s oeuvre to date ends with his exhibition at the White Cube Gallery.  Sewell highlights the element of the exhibition that troubled most critics: the insincere relationship between the live pigs and their audience. “Visitors are invited to lean on the fence,” he writes, “and like Lord Emsworth in the PG Wodehouse novels and Jay Jopling’s father (once Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food), admire these little Blandings beauties and contemplate. But contemplate what? The leap from the amusing comforts of the urban farm to the tragedy of Sichuan is far too great for me to see in it pathetic fallacy.”

Zhang Huan, Felicity no. 3, 2008- Ash on linen

For the London Times’ art critic, Waldemar Januszczak, it is a similar story of incongruity. He admits that Zhang’s live pigs were “lovely,” but continues that they were, in fact, “too lovely.”

Trite “Greenpeace story”?

After looking at the exhibition in its entirety, Januszczak found himself troubled by how trite and shallow the exhibition’s “contemporary Greenpeace story” seemed to be: “How dare this pampered modern artist, showing in the plushest gallery in the plushest corner of London’s Mayfair, toy so glibly with Buddhism and death, with human survival and the real meaning of the Sichuan earthquake? Even the accompanying video, in which Zhang retells the pig’s story, is so badly shot that it constitutes a disgrace.”

Human skulls better than live pigs

Zhang’s portraits of human skulls were more favourably received.  Januszczak described them as “just about haunting enough to survive their awful familiarity…Zhang’s skulls…are particularly bare and vulnerable.” This positive reaction to the portraits led Januszczak to conclude that Zhang “is a better artist than this show suggests.”

Links: Zhang Huan website

RM/KE

Related posts:

 

• Liquidity propels prices, Chinese Political Pop is back- Sotheby’s Contemporary Asian Art Auction 2009 Hong Kong – Oct 2009 – Many of Zhang Huan’s works failed to sell
• What inspires Zhang Huan and why he is taking a break from performance art – video – Feb 2009
• Zhang Huan’s first show in Russia – Moscow Times – Dec 2008
• Which Asian artists are in the Pompidou collection? – Dec 2008
• Zhang Huan’s spectacle at Pace Wildenstein gallery New York – June 2008

Subscribe to Art Radar Asia for more review roundups and news of Asian artists

Short course on Chinese Contemporary Art at AW Asia New York, October 2009

CHINESE CONTEMPORARY ART COURSE

AW Asia is offering a four-part introductory course on Chinese contemporary art “that explores the rise and development of avant-garde art practices in China over the last thirty years”. Taliesin Thomas, Director of AW Asia and MA candidate in East Asian Studies at Columbia University, will lead the course.

Session 1 – From Mao to Now: An Overview of Chinese Contemporary Art

Tuesday, October 6th, 6:30 – 8 pm

This first session presents an overview of Chinese art in the latter half of the 20th century, beginning with a look at the artistic climates in China during the 1960s through the death of Mao in 1976, the opening of China to the West, the emergence of artists’ collectives and key movements, and the development of individual artistic styles through the 1990s. Video screening.

Session 2 – Evening with Melissa Chiu | Director of the Asia Society & Museum, New York

Tuesday, October 13th, 6:30 – 8pm

Melissa Chiu, Director of the Asia Society and Vice President of Global Art Programs, is a leading authority in the field of Chinese contemporary art. She will discuss the work of Chinese artists and their place in the canons of Asian and global art history. Topics outlined in her recent publication, Chinese Contemporary Art: 7 Things You Should Know, will also be discussed.

Session 3 – Visit with Christopher Phillips | Curator, International Center for Photography

Tuesday, October 20th, 6:30 – 8 pm *

This session will take place at the ICP, 1114 Ave of the Americas at 43rd Street In 2004, the International Center for Photography in New York presented a comprehensive exhibition of Chinese photography and video art, curated by Christopher Phillips and Wu Hung. The exhibition, Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China, has become a benchmark for understanding Chinese photography in a global arts context. Chris has been actively involved in the Chinese contemporary art scene since its earliest days. He will present an intimate perspective on the artistic culture that is unique to China’s artists and photographers.

Session 4 –  21st-Century China & the Global Art World

Tuesday, October 27th, 6:30 – 8 pm

In recent years, Chinese contemporary art has been thrust into the art-world spotlight, with a corresponding rise in value and increasing dominance at the marketplace. Critics often overlook the fact that China boasts a history of art-making that spans thousands of years, and that Chinese contemporary artists are merely the latest contributors to this lengthy narrative. This final session examines several leading artists in the field, recent market trends, and the maturing vision of Chinese art today.

Contributed by Wendy Ma

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Surprising new direction taken by cadaver artists and Saatchi stars: Sun Yuan and Peng Yu – interview

HONG KONG CHINESE PHOTOGRAPHY ART

Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, born in the early 1970s and both alumni of the prominent Beijing Central Academy of Art, have a long-established  reputation in Asia for their controversial collaborative installations featuring animals, human tissue and baby cadaver specimens.

In the west they made a big splash in 2008 at the record crowd-drawing Saatchi exhibition of new Chinese art, The Revolution Continues with a satirical work called Old People’s Home (click for video). Both popular and critically-acclaimed, this life-sized 2007 work featured sculptures of decrepit old people “looking suspiciously like world leaders… now long impotent”‘ rolling slowly in wheelchairs around the gallery and occasionally crashing into one another.

Taking a surprising new direction, their exhibition Hong Kong Intervention (Aug 22 – Oct 10) at Osage Gallery delves into the working environments of Filipino domestic workers in Hong Kong.

Each of the 100 Filipino participants took a photograph of a toy grenade placed in his or her employer’s home. Sun Yuan and Peng Yu talk with Wendy Ma about whether or not this experiment in spatial intrusion by Filipino maids creates tensions.

Toy grenade placed in the center of a dining room and the back of the Filipino maid. Photography by Sun Yuan and Peng Yu. Image Courtesy to Erin Wooters.

AR: What inspired you to make photos with Filipino domestic staff?

Two years ago at a square in Central I observed the mass congregation of Filipino girls. I thought it was a very interesting situation since each one is connected to a family in Hong Kong. I started chatting with them and obtained their agreement to volunteer to do the photo shoots. Through them I could intervene in an relationship.

AR: Why do the photographs include the image of a toy grenade?

To intervene, I wanted to use a toy specifically bought in Hong Kong. It was up to them to place it anywhere inside their owner’s house, e.g. inside a garden, on the bed, blending it with the environment. Then they take a photograph of the scene. The toy is a legal product. When your kid plays with a toy grenade, you might find it cute, not dangerous. It was a chance for the participants to exercise their creativity. We wanted to use a very simple object to show how it can open up possibilities.

AR: Is it just a game or does it carry other implications?

It is a game because there are no real consequences. An example of something that is not a game would be the recent incident when a reporter threw a shoe at George Bush. However, it would’ve been a game had he said, “I’m going to throw it at you, first at your head then at your chest.” By not carrying it out, it would have remained just a concept. If something happens in reality, it changes the environment. But right now our work is only a photograph.

The proposition of the game is neutral. It doesn’t carry implications of danger. Last night someone told me that they treat their Filipino maids like guests.

Hidden toy grenade on the book shelve and the male domestic worker. Photography by Sun Yuan and Peng Yu. Image Courtesy to Erin Wooters.

AR: Why is the photograph of the back of the worker juxtaposed next to the surroundings?

Actually, neither the person nor the environment is significant. They are entities with no individual characteristics. Instead of specifying a particular being, I just want to describe a phenomenon.

AR: What have you found out about their lives and about contemporary Hong Kong society?

One third of the Filipino population live outside their country. They are a special group in Hong Kong. During the week they enter into the homes of different families. On Sundays, they bond and return to their own world. When they work, they disappear into the families of Hong Kong. They play different roles in their working and living environment. They use their culture to communicate. As for us, we work outside the family and we bond when we return to our home. For them, they enter our families to work. It’s the reverse.

Bedroom and Filipino maid. Photography by Sun Yuan and Peng Yu. Image Courtesy to Erin Wooters.

AR: Why is the exhibition called Hong Kong Intervention?

Intervention in Chinese can be small (eating a crab) or large-scale (invading a country). It can be magnified in the imagination of readers. You can imagine the explosive possibilities of the toy grenade, despite the fact  that in reality it cannot explode. How the viewer perceives ‘intervention’ is beyond my control.

Intervention can be a strategy to communicate ideas. Ours is the study of a social phenomenon. It does not necessarily mean invasion or changing a situation as it does in the English expression “tossing a grenade”.

Words acquire different meanings in different situations. They cannot be precise. Words cannot express what you actually feel. So art is not expressed through words or titles but through a different means to pull you closer to the underlying meaning.

AR: Are you concerned that the proprietor might feel violated if he saw the photograph of his home on display?

We had no intention to expose individuals. Like I said, the photos of the maids and the homes are not meant to be specifically meaningful; they only a representation and a portrayal of the mass.

Bedroom of a Hong Kong owner and the Filipino maid. Photography by Sun Yuan and Peng Yu. Image Courtesy to Erin Wooters.

AR: What is the role/identity of Filipinos in your work? Creators, participants, or assistants?

I consider all the participants as collaborators: not just Filipinos, but also the audience involved in the discussions. They are common authors of the work. As part of the contract, we don’t have to give credit to them by listing their names as they transferred the copyright to us.

Contributed by Wendy Ma

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Editor’s note: This post is interesting to contrast with a recent exhibition at Para/Site in Hong Kong in which Filipino domestic helpers were invited to receive manicures given by the Australian artist collective Baba International.  Whereas Baba International sought to nurture and engage with their subject physically, the “‘Intervention”‘ exhibition carries intriguing tones of depersonalisation and violence. Baba was keen to explain the intentions behind their work whereas Sun Yuan and Peng Yu step away and allow the viewer to explore and fully shoulder the responsibility for interpretation.

• Hugs in Hong Kong by mainland artists formerly branded national criminals – interview Gao Brothers -Sep 09
• Thai Chinese artist Nipan Oranniwesna shows installation art made of baby powder in Hong Kong – review- Aug 09
• Embedding the Bed in Public Space – interview Hong Kong artist and ParaSite director Tim Li - Aug 09
• Wallpaper’s guide to Beijing art districts – Jul 09
• Young Chinese Artists The Next Generation – book review – Jun 09

Subscribe to Art Radar Asia for more interviews on Beijing artists in Hong Kong

Young Chinese Artists The Next Generation – book review

EMERGING ARTISTS CHINA BOOK REVIEW

A new book called Young Chinese Artists: The Next Generation was recently sent to us for review by the editors. We were a little concerned that this might be another ostensibly objective production, the real purpose of which is – yes, you guessed – the promotion of gallery artists.

Li Yu Liu Bo, She follows you and sleeps in your bed naked? Who is this lady?, 2006, C Print and Lightbox

We were, however, surprised and delighted to find that it is a book to roll around in, play with and draw inspiration from. At 300 pages long it provides an introduction to thirty artists (six of whom work as duos) born in mainland China between 1975 and 1981, roughly half a decade.

Click to buy

This era and time frame – unusually short for a survey – are two of the factors which make this book particularly engaging.

The p0st-’70s era was selected because it marks the end of the Cultural Revolution and artists born in this period are witness to China’s continuing frenetic social and political development: a rich source for artistic inspiration and expression.

But, perhaps just as significantly for the success of the book, these artists, born no later than the seventies, have had enough time to build a body of work large enough for in-depth assessment. At the same time many are sufficiently unknown to allow us a tantalising sense of discovery.

The short time period of 1975-1981 astutely recognises the velocity of change in China in the last thirty years: a shorter time-frame allows for a more rigorous and meaningful analysis of the themes preoccupying artists which are teased out in a series of essays by experts and writers.

The team of twenty writers and editors include influential figures such as Huang Du who was curator for the Chinese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2003 and Philip Tinari who curated the selection of Hong Kong artists at the big-name Louis Vuitton show in Hong Kong 2009.

Xu Zhen, Fitness, 2007

Each artist is awarded one chapter which contains an interview, eight or so images, a listing of principal exhibitions and a one-page overview of the development of the artist’s work by one of the team of writers, usually written in a somewhat academic style. This is an extract from Philip Tinari’s essay ‘The Merry Prankster’ about Xu Zhen:

“Xu Zhen’s recent work has grown more light-hearted, if predicated on the notion of elaborate fictional scenarios. In one 2007 work Fitness he rigged exercise machines with remote control technology so that the viewer can get a virtual ‘workout’ by pressing buttons.”

Perhaps the least successful sections are the promising-sounding artist interviews where responses turn out to be  perfunctory. “Do you believe in true love?” “Yes”. Perhaps the fault lies in the skills of the interviewers who use closed-ended questions without follow up. But then again the snappy style was ubiquitous across the responses and could in fact be a telling reflection of the essential culture of this generation of artists: a time-starved, light-chat-as-snack culture propagated by the internet social media.

What we liked most was the sense that the editors had tried to reflect the real art scene as they experience it on the ground, even though their take may be viewed as controversial.

“In the past several years outside of China a number of contemporary art exhibitions featuring young Chinese artists showcased artistic forms such as video, multimedia and installation which gave the impression that painting was passe… while we have observed that the employment of these ‘new media’ is widespread (quite a few artists work in more than one discipline), painting is very much a driving force in the contemporary art scene.”

Find below more facts about the how the artists have been selected and their names.

Further criteria used for selection:

• representative of the generation – themes which reflect the mindset of the generation
• origins in mainland China – born and raised there
• the variety of media actually used by artists – while ” new media is widespread, painting is still a driving force in contemporary art scene”
• local/international exposure
• body of work showing discernable artistic development
• independence of thought and
• authenticity

No account was given of the market value of the works.

Artists are:

Birdhead, Cao Fei, Chen Ke, Chen Quilin, Chi Peng, Gong Jian, Han Yajuan, Li Hui, Li Jikai, Li Qing, Li Yu and Liu Bo, Liang Yue, Liu Ding, Liu Ren, Liu Weijian, Ma Yanhong, Qiu Xiaofei, Ta Men (THEY), Tang Maohong, Wang Guangle, Wei Jia, Wen Ling, Wu Junyong, Xu Zhen, Yang Yong, Zhang Ding, Zhou Jinhua.

To buy Young Chinese Artists: The Next Generation click here

Related posts:

• Who are the emerging Generation Y artists from Asia? The New Museum selects – March 2009
• What are the latest trends in Chinese art? Who are the top two emerging artists? Melissa Chiu video – Feb 2009
• New roles for art collectors on Second Life – interview Cao Fei – Jan 2009
• Emerging Chinese conceptual artists defies recession at Christies Hong Kong December 2008 - Dec 2008
• Top 5 books on Chinese art by specialist Pippa Dennis – Oct 2008

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Experimental art in Shanghai challenges recession – Carry On Items show review

EXPERIMENTAL ART CHINA

By Chris Moore

OV Gallery in Shanghai is displaying considerable chutzpah with its current exhibition, ‘Carry-on Items’.

In the wake of the financial crisis many galleries in Shanghai have retreated into more conservative and smaller shows. OV decided instead to run a series of highly experimental shows. Following on its earlier ‘Space Disoriented’ light-installations by Li Jing, the new show does something quite radical, converting the viewer’s experience into the art.

Walk into the exhibition and you will be confronted by a wall in the middle of the room, installed just for the exhibition. Upon it are displayed a table of numbers, 3 x 11 digits. And nothing else. What is going on here?

Phone numbers

If you live in China then eventually it will dawn upon you that perhaps they are phone numbers. Call them and you will find yourself speaking to a part of the exhibition, one of three ‘beauties’ who attended the opening night vernissage. Then everything looks utterly different.

For the opening night the artists decorated the gallery with a series of ambiguous clues. The first was the photographic and rather anodyne portrait of a young boy which appeared on the invitation but is also displayed as a huge poster covering the gallery’s shop-window. This remains. The second was a large potted orange tree with a neon ‘OV’ sign plonked precariously in its branches. The third was a measuring tape on a wall, possibly referring to other important works of Chinese contemporary art such as Xu Zhen’s 8848 – 1.86 (2005) and Wang Tiande’s recent ‘One Metre Seventy-Three’ exhibition at Contrasts gallery. The fourth was a half-crumpled disposable cup on a plinth. The fifth was a squawk-box (Doorbell) – you press the button and an obtuse announcement is made. All these things are in the first-half of the divided gallery.

Aircraft

Now, from behind the wall comes a juddering, frightening din, the sound of an aircraft taking off. So you take a peek and you see a film of an empty tarmac. The squeal of the engines begins to build, louder and louder, sending your heart racing and shredding your nerves until it is literally disorientating.

For an instant a person flashes by, launching into the sky. There is a moment’s respite but soon the engine whine begins again and another person takes off. These are post-Nietchean and supersonic versions of Bill Viola’s Five Angels.

Three Beauties

And all the while a photographer is snapping away at everyone and everything in the gallery. But some people more than others: the three ‘beauties’, women representing success, youth, vigour, modernity, and China, but also superficiality, consumerism, anti-art and – pause, wait for it – China.

After Duchamp, it is very hard to make a real anti-art exhibition. In one sense it was a great liberating moment in art but he set the bar very high. Manzoni did it and so did Beuys; Hirst also, before he became a brand. ‘Carry-on Items’ does it too, by subverting, ridiculing, and then re-appropriating the notion of ‘Found Items’.

As one of the artists, Gefei, said to me, the opening is not the exhibition. In fact, the exhibition is not the exhibition. Rather the exhibition is something that takes place when you walk in, and it goes with you when you leave, or when you call one of the numbers or make a ‘connection’. It is easiest to find it in the future as a possibility framed by preconceptions or in the past as a memory shaded by experience. Which sounds a bit pretentious. And it is too. After all, this isn’t an exhibition, it’s just pretending to be one. The artists themselves would just smile.

The final aspect of the exhibition, the catalogue, is yet to come. Prepare for take-off.

 

Another of the 'Three Beauties', Xiao Mi, with Xin Yunpeng's Doorbell (2009) installation - the 'squawk box'

 

 

 

One of the 'Three Beauties', Doing, with other guests at OV Gallery's vernissage

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

Ge Fei, Boy (2009) with one of the exhibition's 'Three Beauties', the intriguingly named Doing

Phone numbers of the ‘Three Beauties’

 

 

 

 

Contributed by Chris Moore, a writer and a partner in the contemporary art investment firm mooreandmooreart.co.uk. He lives in Shanghai and specialises in contemporary Chinese art.

Related posts:

• Outlook for Chinese art market – Larry Warsh AW Asia podcast - May 2009
• Chinese artist-run spaces rise up again? May 2009
• Emerging Chinese conceptual artist Li Hui defies recession at Christies Hong Kong sale – Dec 2008

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Mei Moses art index founder plans Chinese version, optimistic about Chinese art

CHINESE ART PRICES

The current state of Chinese art prices was discussed  before members of the Foreign Correspondent’s Club of China who had gathered at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) to hear a dialogue between UCCA director Jerome Sans and Cheung Kong GSB professor  Mei Jianping.

Mei Jianping is founder of the Mei Moses art index. Using a database of over 15,000 art pieces drawn from publicly available Sotheby’s and Christie’s auction prices, the Mei-Moses index demonstrates that investments in quality art, in the long term, deliver higher returns than bonds and gold. The index has received criticisms from some quarters for survivor-biassed results  – the index only tracks the prices of works which sell and ignores works which remain unsold. Supporters point out that stock market indices are similarly biassed and ignore companies which drop out of the index or go bankrupt. Despite these contrary views, the index remains one of the most widely referenced indices by press sources.

Professor Mei noted that

art prices frequently track the economic development of the artist’s home culture, citing how most American art from the 1950s has dramatically increased in value since. He then went on to describe prices at the peak of the Chinese art market last year as artificially high, buoyed by speculation.

Director Sans noted that

• any trend with 10 years of momentum behind it cannot be regarded as mere hype
• half of the top 20 selling artists in the world are Chinese
• no collection or retrospective of contemporary art today would be complete without one or two Chinese artists which is a dramatic change from a decade ago.

At the conclusion of the talk Mei Jan-Ping affirmed his belief that the “long-term prospects for Chinese art as an investment, in spite of the current economic climate, were great”. He is sufficiently optimistic  about the long term interest of the Chinese people in the art market that according to Chinese Radio International he is now working on a Chinese version of his index.
Source: Cheung Kong GSB News 

Related categories: market watch, art index, Chinese art, art recession

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• Hong Kong cuts Spring 2009 Asian art sale by two thirds March 2009
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• Mei Moses index founder talks about the impact of the crisis on art Sep 2009

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Who is buying Chinese art? The Mugrabi family is

CHINESE ART COLLECTING

Not everyone is deserting the art market. Artzine, a site which focuses on Chinese art, reports that

Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Auction in London in early February had a few surprisingly strong sales. A Zeng Fanzhi piece from his “Mask Series,” beat estimates and sold for about $880,000 and a Yan Peiming “Mao” portrait from 2004 sold for $459,000. A Wang Guangyi mixed media piece with a bicycle sold for about $193,000.

But this is a recession isn’t it? Who is buying?

Mugrabi family

Zeng’s work was purchased by Jose Mugrabi , one of the world’s most aggressive collectors of works by Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst . One of the few benefits of the recession is that it reveals to galleries and artists those core collectors who will support their activities through downturns in the market.

I was on a bus recently with a marketing executive from a prominent Hong Kong gallery and I asked her how gallery sales were going in the recession.  Were they bearing up? “Well,” she said “of course all the middle class who were buying for their walls have gone. It was ridiculous last year.  At the Hong Kong art fair, we were selling pieces like checkout girls in a supermarket.”

And now? Are you selling anything at all? I asked.

“Thanks be for collectors” she said looking heavenward. ”They still come in to get their fix, they are like addicts. They can’t help themselves”.

Gallerists have an insider’s view revealing how grimly compulsive art collecting can be for some. The justifications and rationalisations only serve to underscore the power of the drive to collect.

The New York Times has just published a fascinating piece delving into the motivations of the Mugrabi family. These collectors-cum-dealers own over 3,000 pieces which were worth over US$1 billion at one stage during last year’s market high.

As private dealers, the Mugrabis do not own a gallery or represent artists. They buy or sell works in about 100 art auctions annually, nearly one every three days. And the rest of the time, they buy and sell through galleries and fellow dealers.

“We’re market makers,” Alberto said. “You can’t have an impact buying one or two pictures per artist. We’re not buying art like Ron Lauder – just to put it on a wall. We want inventory.” He equated inventory with liquidity: “It gives you staying power.” In the commodities sector, the analogue would be making a run on a precious metal – in order to manipulate the price.

To ramp prices in a rising market can be highly rewarding but surely it is not quite such a good strategy as the market drops away. According to the New York Times, the Mugrabi family insists

they will be able to continue doing what they do, regardless of how the ground may have shifted beneath their feet. “We’ll become more like collectors and less like dealers now,” David said. “More buying, less selling.

A supportive friend points out that that they buy to protect the prices of their existing holdings

For the Mugrabis’ preferred artists, the family doesn’t merely operate in the art market; it is the market. “They’re so invested, they’re like the casino, not the gambler,” said the gallery owner Francis Naumann, a friend. What threatens them at an auction is not the presence of other aggressive bidders but cautious bidders.

“If it’s good for Sotheby’s and Christie’s, it’s good for us,” Alberto said.

But is that the entire story? The New York Times has something else to say.

The Mugrabis give the impression that, no matter how well they have played the market up to now, their compulsion to buy and sell art is not entirely rational.

Back in the early 1990s, when Jose was still making his ascent, he got “a little overextended” purchasing art, he said. Asher Edelman, a financier and art dealer who is acquainted with the Mugrabis, said that about five or six years ago, Jose told him over lunch that he was “nervous” about being overinvested in art. “I told him, ‘Look, why don’t you sell off some of your collection, stop buying, and you can lay low for a few years?’ and he said that was a good idea,” Edelman recalled. “Then he kept on buying.”

Thanks be for collectors indeed,  thanks be for the Mugrabis.

Contributed by Kate Cary Evans, editor Art Radar Asia

Sources: New York Times (this is a long but fascinating piece, well worth a read)  Artzine

Related categories: Collectors, Art recession, Chinese art

Related posts:

• Sneak a peak at the art collection of dealer diva Pearl Lam in her private residence video - Feb 2009
• Russian billionaire collector Mikhelson continues support for art despite downturn – Bloomberg – Feb 2009
• Which artists from Asia are in the Pompidou collection? Dec 2008
• Tips from a dealer – how to buy art in a recession Nov 2008 – tips from dealer  Edward Winkleman

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Altered States video – what inspires Zhang Huan and why he is taking a break from performance art

CHINESE ARTIST VIDEO

Zhang Huan

Zhang Huan, a leading performing artist from China  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This 2007 video covers:

Ash Head series

 

 

• how museums are studios for Zhang Huan
• why Zhang Huan stopped his performance art and his plan to return to it
• how his prints are inspired by martial arts books and astrology
• how  giant sawn off body parts of Tibetan Buddhist relics destroyed during the Cultural Revolution inspire him
• what makes a good artist “A good artist is illogical”

Links: Zhang Huan website, Zhang Huan on wikipedia

Related posts:

• Zhang Huan’s first show in Russia – Moscow Times – Dec 2008
• Which Asian artists are in the Pompidou collection? – Dec 2008
• Zhang Huan’s spectacle at Pace Wildenstein gallery New York – June 2008

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