Surprises in store at Singapore Art Fair October 2008 – Asian Art News

ART FAIR SINGAPORE

ARTSingapore 2008 has some important surprises in store says Asian Art News. There will be a new focus on art from Korea, India and Japan, first time gallery participants, a collector’s show of art never before displayed in public and specially featured emerging artists to watch.

 “This year’s event will highlight a sizeable representation from India Korea and Japan” says fair director, Chen Shen Po. Alongside 22 new Korean fair participants ARTSingapore will also welcome 13 Japanese art galleries including Megumi Ogita Gallery, Shonandai MY Gallery, Arte Gallery and Shinsedo Hatanaka. This marks a new milestone in the development of the fair which has historically been a showcase for South East Asian art.

First time gallery participants include Sundaram Tagore Gallery (USA), Cais Gallery (Korea), Hwas Gallery (China), Silverlens (Philippines) and Bruno Art Group (Israel). Click here for full gallery list.

Jirapat Tatsanasomboon

Rising artists to be featured at the fair include:

• Wu Jianjun (China)
• Kengo Nakamura (Japan)
• Jirapat Tatsanasomboon (Thailand)
• Dang Xuan Hoa (Vietnam)
• Wayan Sujanda (Indonesia)
• Thota Vaikuntam (India)

This year the popular Special Collector’s Showcase section is curated by Masanori Fukuoka owner and founder of Japan’s Glenbarra Art Museum and who according to Asian Art News is ‘recognised as the world’s top collector and connoisseur of Indian contemporary art’. Fukuoka has arranged a solo show of Jogen Chowdhury (b 1939), one of the foremost artists of post-Independent India which will contain 18 ink pastel and watercolour works never before displayed in public.

As well as the Collector’s Showcase there will be another important exhibition. Kim Soo Keong a leading collector in Korea and a director of Kwangju Biennale Foundation has agreed to loan the Fair a group works from her collection of more than 100 pieces of Nam June Paik’s works, some of which including TV Repair Man and Blue Buddha have never been shown in public. Kim Soo Keong’s Nam June Paik collection is widely regarded as being amongst the most important in the world.

In total the fair will feature 110 galleries and institutions from 16 countries who will showcase more than US$30 million of artworks before an expected 15,000 visitors. Despite the fair’s growth from just 19 galleries in 2000, the Singapore fair remains ‘one of the most friendly and accessible’ fairs in the region says Asian Art News.

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Niubi kids and American art – Top ten shows in Hong Kong September 2008 part 2 – Saatchi Online

 EXHIBITIONS HONG KONG

Top ten shows in Hong Kong this September part 2 published in Saatchi Online Magazine and written by Art Radar Asia’s editor Kate Evans.

Lee Waisler: Portraits and Abstractions
11 September to 11 October
Sundaram Tagore Gallery

Sundaram Tagore’s first solo show in its new gallery in Hong Kong features the eminent American artist Lee Waisler whose works are in permanent collections of prestigious institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Lee Waisler presents two series of works: portraits of iconic figures and abstracts, both in a trademark style in which he loads the canvas with layers of paints and organic materials to create thick sweeps of pigment separated by knife-sharp ridges. His portrait series includes the stylized over-bold faces of, amongst others, Marilyn Monroe, Mahatma Gandhi, Kafka and Albert Einstein. Their textured planes draw our hands to hover over the surface, curious, wanting to touch but not quite daring: a potent echo of the real life lure of iconic idols and our visceral compulsion to draw near, look closely and touch. For this show Waisler has created an interesting new body of work incorporating Chinese culture and imagery including a portrait of Anna May Wong, a famous Chinese-American actress of the 1930s and 1940s and Doctor Ho, a renowned healer from China.

 

Larry Yung: Desire – Loss

Amelia Johnson Contemporary
4 September to 27 September 2008

In the works of this much anticipated show two years in the making, Chinese American artist Larry Yung places idealized images of American and Chinese people alongside material objects of desire and cultural icons such as Mickey Mouse. Smiling characters are painted with a flatness reminiscent of the iconography of Chinese propaganda posters and 1950’s US advertisements of the American Dream. This juxtaposition invites us to examine the complex relationship between the demise of the American Dream and the rise of Chinese aspirations. His stiff stylized figures appear artificial and remind us material prosperity is impermanent and illusory: part of a fleeting cycle of lack, desire, success and loss. His work has been commissioned by Proctor & Gamble, Pierre Cardin and Nordstroms and is held in various private collections including those of Marvel Comics, Esquire Magazine and Microsoft.

 

Niubi Newbie Kids
Mixed media group exhibition: Chen Fei, Chen Ke, Zhou Jin Hua, Zhang Ye Xing, Zhou Yi Qian, Feng Wei
19 September to 13 October 2008
Schoeni Gallery

Schoeni was pivotal in the nineties in promoting the art of then unknown Chinese political pop artists such as Yue Min Jun, Zeng Fan Zhi and Zhang Xiaogang, many of whom have since gone on to achieve iconic status and high auction prices. This September the gallery is showing the next generation of 80s born unknowns, the rebellious Niubi Kids. Untranslatable and a play on Chinese slang curse words, the word ‘Niubi’ is used by young people to identify the new wave of rebellious cool young Chinese. Also termed China’s ‘Me’ generation, a product of China’s One Child policy, they are less concerned with politics than with themselves, issues of identity and alternative worlds. This provoking not-to-be missed show of mixed media works, replete with influences from the internet, comics, video games and Japanese culture, is the result of two years work by the gallery and is the first in a biannual series.

Globalisation of Asian art galleries gathers pace

ASIA HONG KONG MARKET WATCH Hong Kong now lays claim to being the third largest art auction market in the world, a development much trumpeted by auction houses and fair organisers. A quieter but no less significant change is happening in  the Asian gallery sales market.

In May 2008, New York based Sundaram Tagore Gallery opened its third gallery in Hong Kong following its launch in Beverley Hills last month.  It is the latest in a line of Asia-focussed galleries to expand its franchise around the world. Established in 2000,  the gallerist Sundaram Tagore was profiled by Forbes as “India’s Art Ambassador” and he says his eponymous gallery group is “devoted to examining the exchange of ideas between Western and non-Western cultures”.

In contrast the Opera Gallery chain was spawned in Asia, first opening its doors in Singapore in 1994 at the initiative of Gilles Dyan. Today, the Opera Gallery is present in many of the world’s art capitals: Paris ( since 1994), New York (2000), Miami (2003), Hong Kong (2004) and London (2005) with galleries to open in another five cities before 2009.

Osage is a dynamic international gallery group that was established in 2004 and now has exhibition spaces in Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai and Singapore. Unlike Sundaram Tagore and Opera which bring international artists to Asia and promote Asian artists around the world, Osage is dedicated specifically to the exhibition, promotion and development of contemporary Asian artists, art and ideas.

Other galleries like Grosvenor Vadehra are establishing commercial links between east and west by developing joint venture style relationships. Grosvenor Vadehra is a collaboration between the Grosvenor Gallery, London, and the Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi for the promotion of international art within India, and Indian art within the UK.

Source: Artradar
Links: www.sundaramtagore.com www.osagegallery.com www.operagallery.com

For more on globalisation of dealers https://artradarasia.wordpress.com/2008/07/01/new-york-dealers-pacewildenstein-james-cohan-open-in-china-july-august-2008/