Located in the second of two floors containing the fair, “Mapping Asia” may have been the best section, but its impact was somewhat diminished by what appeared to be suspect selection criteria. The Soka Art Center occupied seven of the 33 booths in the section —no other gallery had more than one — in addition to two other booths elsewhere in the fair. Soka either stepped in to fill out spaces left empty by a lack of gallery participation or, more likely, was itself the reason for the existence of “Mapping Asia.” The gallery, in addition to its ties with director Wang Yihan, is also one of CIGE’s primary backers.

In the first-floor general exhibition hall, the tendency toward solo exhibitions continued alongside a second, more visually defined and obvious trend: Chinese artists addressing the rapidly changing urban landscape in China. Galerie Urs Miele (Switzerland/China) presented nine photographic triptychs of construction sites by rising Beijing star Ai Weiwei from his series “Provisional Landscapes,” while Chinese Contemporary (China/UK/USA) showed “Bird’s Nest,” a pinhole photograph of Herzog and de Meuron’s Olympic Stadium, by Shi Guori. Tang Contemporary Art, which opened in Beijing in 2006 and is a sister organization to Thailand’s Tang Gallery, showed a large installation in which Jiang Zhi transformed the space to appear like an abandoned room. A video retro-projected onto a window showed a cityscape with blue sky marked by a rainbow of floating logos from national and transnational corporations.

These two trends — the solo exhibition as a format, and contemporary Chinese landscape as content — suggest a burgeoning desire among Chinese artists and dealers to move away from visual sound bites and offer a more in-depth experience of artistic practices in the region. The only thing that seemed to be missing from the fair was overtly political artwork. Despite the heated political situation that China has experienced lately due to recurring protests there and abroad (Olympics-related and otherwise), there wasn’t any plainly political work in the fair, even if some wall texts claimed otherwise. “Self-censorship” was the explanation that a gallery dealer from Spain gave for the situation; indeed, visitors wanting to see more politically sensitive works were invited to step into backrooms or peer at dealers’ laptops, which made walking the fair feel like strolling down black market corridors.   

For all the focus on Asian and local art, Chinese representation was still somewhat spotty. International leaders ShanghART Gallery from Shanghai and Vitamin Creative Space from Guangzhou were in attendance, but several important local players were not, including the San Gimignano, Italy-based Galleria Continua, whose satellite in Beijing boasts one of the most ambitious international exhibition programs in China, and has participated in all prior editions. Also notably absent was Pekin Fine Arts, the Beijing gallery directed by American expat and former Courtyard Gallery director Meg Maggio.  

Overall, dealers’ experiences seemed to vary at CIGE, particularly among the newcomers, who made up roughly a quarter of the exhibitors. New York’s Luxe Gallery debuted with two booths, one in the general exhibition hall and another in the section called “Alternative Energy,” which consisted of 12 booths presenting artists working in digital formats. This section struggled somewhat, and Luxe’s dual experience of both logistical complications and commercial success seemed commonplace. On the one hand, the booth suffered from a lack of tech support; a video installation by artist Cliff Evans was still not operational on the fair’s second day due to technical difficulties. On the brighter side, during the first hours of the fair’s VIP preview reception, a rather determined Indonesian collector approached the Luxe Gallery director: Interested in commissioning a Luxe artist to create a new site-specific work, she made travel arrangements on the spot for the gallery director and artist to visit Jakarta immediately after the fair ended.