The Dragon AwakesBy Xhingyu Chen
Published: December 3, 2007
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Courtesy ShContemporary
ShContemporary 2007's organizers emphasized that they were reaching out to a general Asian audience.
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Some market watchers saw September’s ShContemporary fair in
Shanghai as evidence of this new interest, though the fair organizers
always emphasized that they were reaching out to a general Asian
audience rather than a specifically Chinese one. Now, Shanghai’s Zendai Museum of Modern Art is
taking a major step in reaching out specifically to local Chinese
collectors by organizing a special trip for a select group to Art Basel Miami Beach in December. While this isn’t the first time that a trip like this has been taken—the late Jonathan Napack,
formerly Art Basel’s Asia Art adviser, organized a similar excursion to
Basel last year for a very small group including Zendai founder Dai Zhitong,
who in the end couldn’t secure a visa—the fact that it is put together
by a local entity indicates that the Chinese are starting to play a
more active role in educating themselves about the market. And what Chinese collectors know at the moment is Chinese contemporary and modern; very few are interested in, or even familiar with, Western contemporary art. Wu, who started collecting Western modern art in the late 1980s and moved on to Chinese art in the mid-’90s, claims that his gallery’s client base is split evenly between Westerners and Chinese, but admits that most of his Chinese clients are based in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and other parts of Asia, with a smaller percentage from the mainland. Furthermore, he says that many Chinese collectors, particularly those from the mainland, are currently priced out of the market, as it is difficult for them to justify paying millions of dollars for a contemporary piece. |