Four Asian artists nominated for NYC PULSE Awards

EMERGING ASIAN ARTISTS –  ART PRIZES

 

Four Asian artists were nominated for Pulse Awards at the PULSE art fair  which took place in New York City and Miami between 4-7 March 2010: Shun Duk Kang from Korea, Hiroshige Furuhaka from Japan, Farsad Labbauf from Iran and Sopheap Pich from Cambodia.

Though none of these four artists won either the PULSE award or the People’s Choice award, the fair gave them extensive exposure (they each won their own booths) and point to their status as emerging names in the global scene.

Shin Duk Kang, Heaven and Earth, 2008

Shin Duk Kang, a South Korean artist, is represented by Seoul’s Galerie Pici. She creates installation art that reflect the limits of her material while evoking nature in her work. She also makes prints, which utilize geometric forms to continue exploring the subject of nature.

Hiroshige Fukuhara, The Night Became Starless, 2008

Ai Kowada Gallery 9 represents Hiroshige Fukuhara, who specialises in drawings with graphite and black gesso on wood. Viewers are drawn to the simplicity of his works, as well as the subtle addition of graphite, which makes his black-on-black drawings shimmer from certain angles. Before PULSE, he was featured in PS1’s 2001 show “BUZZ CLUB: News from Japan.”

Farsad Labbauf, Joseph, 2007

Iranian artist Farsad Labbauf combines figurative painting with Iranian calligraphy to create a unified image, regardless of the content of the words or pictures within that image. He refers to his Persian heritage as his inspiration, especially its carpet-making tradition: that unrelated elements were able to come together in linear patterns to create a whole. He concludes that his work is “often an attempt for the union of the internal.”

Sopheap Pich, Cycle, 2005

Sopheap Pich is a Cambodian artist represented by Tyler Rollins Fine Art of New York. His work mostly consists of sculptures of bamboo and rattan that evoke both biomorphic figures and his childhood during the Khmer Rogue period. He has become a major figure in the Cambodian contemporary art scene.

AL/KCE

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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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Murakami’s Geisai Miami cancelled, Geisai Taiwan debuts this December

INTERNATIONAL ART FAIRS

Takashi Murakami

The contemporary Japanese art guru Takashi Murakami is continuing to shape the infrastructure of the art world through his biannual Geisai art fair, which Murakami intends to expand to multiple international cities. The Art Newspaper reports that Geisai Taiwan, to be held in Taipei, will replace Geisai Miami this December. The new Geisai Taiwan event is planned to have more than 200 exhibition booths for new artists. In contrast, the cancelled Miami event was structured differently, presenting only 21 new artists in 2008 which a panel selected from a pool of applicants. The event was originally intended to coincide with Art Basel Miami.

Regarding the cancellation,  the spokesperson for Murakami’s company commented:

” We would not say that Geisai Miami has been cancelled, but rather that we are simply building on our desire to expand the Geisai event/concept worldwide.”

Geisai has been highly successful in Japan, growing each year since its 2002 Tokyo inception and repeatedly attracting 1,000 participants and 9,000 visitors for the one-day event.

Geisai is produced by Murakami’s company Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd., and is intended as a platform to discover new artistic talent.

Soichi Yamaguchi, whose art now commands high prices, entered Geisai as an unknown artist and cites his win at Geisai #9 in 2007 as the turning point in his career  that helped him find gallery representation. The Japanese event has taken on a festival-like feel, and has been highly accessible for new artists, with booth fees starting at ¥25,000 (approximately $270 USD).

Related Posts

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Art in storage, at fairs and sales – is it getting harder to insure?

ART FAIR INSURANCE

Last week, The Art Newspaper posted an interesting report that claimed that art is getting harder to insure. According to their source, Richard Northcott, executive director of the art, jewellery and private client division at Heath Lambert Group (London), firms that protect specialist fine art insurers are becoming cautious of insuring a large amount of art kept in one place at the same time, such as in storage warehouses and exhibitions. The article explains why:

“For a long time nobody in the insurance world was monitoring the cumulative value of art shown at fairs or kept in storage,” explains Northcott. “But in the last two or three years the industry has become a lot more sophisticated and a lot more aware of the issue.”

This is partly owing to 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which made insurers aware that a single catastrophe could wipe out an entire art fair or storage facility, and partly owing to recent developments in software that have made it much easier for re-insurers and specialist fine art insurers to track the location of the thousands of policies they have underwritten at any one time.

At Art 40 Basel in June, “there were already murmurs of a problem,” Northcott says.

“There is a limit to the insurance market’s capacity for the cumulative value of policies for a single event like an art fair,” says Northcott. This stands at around $2bn; the insurance value of art at Frieze this year is much lower as the downturn in the contemporary market has led to declining prices, and the many younger galleries exhibiting for the first time are offering less expensive, emerging artists. But he believes that as the art market recovers, “all major art fairs will come under scrutiny by the industry”.

RM/KE

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GREEN: New affordable art fair in Beijing smashes the traditional art fair format

BEIJING ART FAIR

Light up your senses with fresh, cutting-edge, yet affordable art on the new frontier– that is the proposition of the GREEN Art Fair 2009. Organized by New CAE Media and Air Media, promoters of the established Beijing art fair  CIGE(China International Gallery Exposition Exhibition), the GREEN (Sep 20 – 29) art exhibition will bring thousands of artworks by young artists into the spotlight at China World Trade Center Exhibition Hall in Beijing.

Miss Wang Yi Han, CEO of CAE Media Beijing Chinese Art Exposition’s Medi) and organizer of this art event, talks to Wendy Ma about the concept of the GREEN art exhibition and what differentiates GREEN from all precedent art fairs.

"One of Micke" by Zhang Hui.

Q: Why is it called GREEN? What’s the significance behind the name? Does it have to do with social responsibility and sustainability?

Because most artists who participate in this exhibition are young and emerging, the majority of them have never publicly exhibited their work before. Thus the overall style of the show will be rather fresh, future-oriented, and dynamic. GREEN signifies growth, future, and hope, which correspond to the mission of this exhibition.

Q: How is GREEN different from other art exhibitions such as CIGE? What’s so unique about GREEN?

The format of the GREEN art show is utterly different from that of CIGE. CIGE is an exhibition joined by galleries, each of them with an independent exhibition district, targeting at the relatively mature art collectors. Unlike the conventional art exhibition, GREEN is an art entity itself without district or borders. Everything is planned together and sold together. What makes GREEN most distinctive is breaking the traditional art exhibition’s format by presenting a fresh new concept.

"Birth" by Fan Xiao Yan.

Q: Who do you hope will buy the art? Who are the target audience (buyers) for GREEN? What are your expectations?

We hope to attract more of the city’s middle-class for visiting the show and purchasing artwork. While this exhibition aims to provide young artists exhibiting opportunities, its more important goal is to transmit the concept of art consumption to a wider circle of audience.

Q: How do you identify which art is suitable for the fair’s exhibiton categories? Does it always have to do with China?

This is GREEN’s first year of exhibition. All the artwork is done by Chinese artists. In the future it’s possible that GREEN will expand to the Asian or even international sphere. In the era of globalization, the growing environment as well as culture and education among artists from different countries are becoming increasingly similar. So it’s unfair to categorise the young artists’ creations georgraphically.

Q: How do you select the artwork for GREEN? What are the criteria and are there any taboos about certain sensitive subjects? Or is the fair 100% accepting of all types of messages expressed in the artwork?

One is through artist’s voluntary registration. Another one is that we dispatch representatives to the nation’s art academies and cities where artists cluster. After collecting information about numerous young artists, we select the appropriate artists. Our criteria are that the young artist’s artwork must possess a certain artistic value. Meanwhile, it should carry unique personal style. Lastly, the price tag of the artwork shouldn’t be high. We don’t place restrictions on any special topic.

"Fluttering Rain" by Cheng Ya Ding

Q: In what ways is the art by these less well-known young artists different from art done by the more established names?

So far it seems that style-wise, the work of young artists effuses a more modern, more vivacious, more carefree quality. In terms of their chosen topic it’s more personal and sentimental.

Q: How many participating artists?

So far 260.

Q: Besides giving the young artists opportunities and buyers exposure to fresh young artists, what else is GREEN endeavoring to achieve or to surpass?

"Sticky Fish" by Cui Yu

In the past few years the contemporary Chinese art market had been developing rapidly, which led to the situation where purchasing artwork became purely for investment purposes. Through GREEN, we endeavor to convey a certain type of concept and attitude towards art consumption. We hope that more people will purchase artwork for personal pleasure and appreciation, for consumption rather than for investment. Moreover, we hope that galleries can use GREEN as a search for prospective artists with whom they can cooperate.

Q: Why start an art fair now when there is a recession?

Our company has been doing CIGE for the past six years and served many galleries. We possess enormous momentum effects in the overall art market and business development. Due to the economic crisis, the art market in China has been severely affected just the same. The businesses of art galleries have withered, and many art investors have ceased buying. Under these circumstances, we need to do more to continue propelling the influence of art in the society; art exhibitions can help cultivate more art lovers, which can in turn cultivate more new consumption powers for the art market.

Q: Will the artists represent themselves like Gesai in Japan or will galleries take stalls in the fair like usual art fairs?

In a way, it’s similar to GESAI in Japan in that the focus is on young artists’ work. What makes our format different is that we employ a comprehensive, large-scale exhibition. Neither do we divide up the exhibition spaces into independent compartments, nor do the artists have to sell their own artwork at the exhibition – there will be salesmen.

"Diaries of a Fairy-tale" by Luo Cai

Q: Do you have any galleries signed up yet? If so, which ones?

There are no participating galleries in this exhibition. It’s a large-scale exhibition with only artwork.

Wang Yi Han, CEO of CAE Media, standing in front of the banner for the 2009 CIGE in Beijing

Q: Why have you chosen this location? Why not another city?

Because we’ve conducted activities in Beijing before, we are more familiar with Beijing and have found more artists and art enthusiasts in Beijing. The cultural and art scenes are also much more alive, which is ideal for organizing this exhibition. In the future we will also look into other cities that fulfill our requirements.

-Contributed by Wendy Ma

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Russian art fair Art Moscow delayed by recession

ART FAIR RUSSIA

According to a Bloomberg report by John Varoli, one of Russia’s biggest contemporary art fairs Art Moscow has been postponed from May 14th until September 2009

 to tap a crowd headed for a larger exhibition, as falling oil prices and squeezed credit quell art purchases among the nation’s rich. The 13th Annual Art Moscow will now be timed to coincide with the state-run Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, which starts Sept. 24, said organizer Expo Park Exhibition Projects Ltd.

“By September, everyone will have gotten used to the new reality of the crisis,” said Vasily Bychkov, Expo Park’s general director. “Foreign galleries will be more willing to come to Art Moscow when they know it coincides with the Biennale, which attracts leading international curators and collectors.”

Bloomberg for more

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Arco 2009 art fair video – Vernissage TV

INTERNATIONAL ART FAIR VIDEO

This silent video shows a walk-through of the fair for professionals in the first two days and gives a sense of the quality and styles of art at the show. An absence of artist information or image details makes this video more tantalising than informative but it is worth a look.

http://blip.tv/file/1764960/

Related posts:

• Arco Madrid news round up – gloomy predictions, galleries drop out, public funding prop, Indian art Feb 2009

ARCO Madrid 2009 international art fair news round-up – galleries drop out, public funding prop, Indian art

INTERNATIONAL ART FAIRS

ARCO Madrid, one of the largest and most important international art fairs holds its 28th edition from 11 February to 16 February 2009  in a new location:  Halls 6, 8 & 10 at Feria de Madrid, Spain. 238 galleries from 32 countries are participating.

Financial downturn hits art world – BBC – 16 Feb 209 – video clip – An insubstantial very brief video story about how the crisis is affecting the art fair: some artists are using the crisis as inspiration for their art: interview with art fair director Lourdes Fernandez who says it is more difficult for some dealers this year.

Dealers reported mixed results at Spain’s monster contemporary art fair Arco – Financial Times – 14 Feb 2009 – Georgina Adam reports that Spanish museums budgets have melted and prices of artworks have been reduced. Artists attracting interest/buyers included Georg Baselitz, Amaya Gonzalez Reyes, Eugenio Merino’s take off of Damien Hirst ‘For The Love of Gold’.

Click to buy

Arco Beep New Media Art Award  – We Make Money Not Art  – 13 Feb 2009 – Post written by a member of the jury about the award, the entries and the winner. The award was won by Ubermorgen.com for its EKMRZ Trilogy, a fascinating triptych about the three kings of ecommerce Google, Amazon and ebay. The Google art work ‘Google will eat itself’ involves the artists raising money with google text ads and using the money to buy Google shares.

Panorama India Artslant provides a list of artists and galleries from India, Arco’s special guest country 2009.

Tatsumi Orimoto performs Punishment at Arco 2009 video – Vernissage TV

Hirst statue stars at Madrid show as dealers aim to defy slump – Bloomberg – 13 Feb 2009 – A Florida collector bought Merino’s sculpture of Hirst committing suicide “Hirst is always trying to think of ways to make his art the most expensive. If he killed himself, then the value of his art would increase a lot.” Despite India being guest country only 13 galleries from there. US galleries dropped from 26 last year to 7 this year. Plenty of bargains. Russian GMG Gallery sold 2 photographs by Anatoly Zhuravlev to a prominent Swiss collector of Chinese art.

Image carousel – Telegraph – 19 images of artists: Isaac Montoya, Filomena Soares, Jose Batista Marques, Enrique Marty, Madeleine Berkhemer, Vivek Vilasini  (India), Jitish Kallat (India), Valay Shende, Eugenio Merino, Yi Hwan-Kon, Samuel Salcedo, Bernardi Roig.

Indian art draws Europeans – IANS via Zee News – 13 Feb 2009 – New trend in Indian art away from works on canvas towards installation and new media apparent in gallery shows and  Panorama, the show of Indian art curated by Bose Krishnamachari. Dayanita Singh in solo show, Shilpa Gupta work finds European buyer.

Gloom at major European art fair as boom in sales seen over  – AFP  – 12 Feb 2009 – This is a prediction story about the mood prior to the event. Galleries predict  limited cash, prices down 25% for contemporary art, buyers will take time over purchases. Artist view: lower prices an opportunity for young. Includes image carousel.

Arco Madrid 2009 opens – calm forecast  – Art Daily – 12 Feb 2009 – This is a facts piece with a promotional tone. It covers details of the move to the new location and the fair’s programmes and projects: India is showcased, three curated shows cover performance art, contemporary art and technology in art, there is a list of talk forums by experts and a description of the section showcasing capsule collections from private museums.

Recession triggers improvement in Indian art quality– SindhToday via IANS – 11 February 2009 – This is a views piece about how the collector base for Indian art is changing and broadening particularly in Europe and is based on interviews with Bose Krishnamachari curator of the special Indian Panorama section and Peter Nagy of Nature Morte, an exhibitor.

Fine Art Publicity - click to buy

Galleries drop out of ARCO– Artinfo – 5 Feb 2009 – Edited version of Der Standard story below.

ARCO hit by crisis– Artforum via APAvia Der Standard – 3 Feb 2009 – 20 galleries of 270 cancelled – dropouts include 2 from South America, one from Spain and Lisson Gallery London. Portugese Ministry of Culture provided funding to prevent more.

Related links: ARCO website

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• Which are the top 10 international contemporary art fairs?Artprice Jan 2009
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Which are the top 10 international contemporary art fairs?

ART FAIRS

The top ten art fairs in the world attracting the largest numbers of galleries are:

1. Art Basel, which is by far the leader with 304 exhibitors, followed by

2. Art Basel Miami (248 galleries),

3. Art Cologne (191),

4. Fiera di Bologne (165),

5. ARCO (164) in Madrid

6. Art Chicago (158),

7. the Armory Show (158 galleries) in New York,

8. MiArt (156) in Milan,

9. the Frieze Art Fair (150) in London and

10. the FIAC (149 galleries) in Paris.

“In statistical terms there is a relationship between the reputation or prestige of the fairs and their size. At the other end of the ranking, the small fairs only attract a dozen or several dozen exhibitors (e.g. Glasgow Art Fair, Art Paris Abu Dhabi and Print Basel)” says Professor Quemin of Paris University.

Artprice, the French auction price database company has produced a report Contemporary Art Market 2007/2008 in which Alain Quemin, Professor of Art Sociology at Paris University analyses 51 Art Fairs selected by Artprice and their 4658 gallery participations to produce this list.

Artprice report Contemporary Art Market 2007/2008 This 99 page report is free to download and contains information about auction, fair and geographical trends and artist prices for the year to June 30 2008.

Related categories:  art fairs, market watch

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Asian Art Fair in New York cancelled – New York Times, Artinfo

The New York Times reports:

Reflecting the recent nose dive in confidence in the art and antiquities markets, the International Asian Art Fair held each spring in Manhattan has been canceled. The event’s organizers said the current economic slump was the determining factor. The fair had been scheduled for March 11 to March 15 at the Park Avenue Armory, at 67th Street.

New York Times

“Many of the dealers who had contracted to take part are not in a position to go forward in the current climate,” organizer Haughton International Fairs said on its Web site, “and as such we have decided a fair would put an untenable strain on their resources.”

“We hope to be able to re-launch the fair in 2010 and look forward to working with our exhibitors again,” the statement said.

Artinfo

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