BEIJING— It’s exhilarating to be in China these days, particularly Beijing. Practically the whole city is under construction, and trees and flowers are being planted every day along major streets and highways, no doubt to impress tourists expected for the Olympics. Yes, there is some discontent here and there about the games — the torch, human rights issues, and so on — but on the ground that all feels nominal in comparison with the local hopes of international stature and prosperity that come with hosting the world. There is so much desire in the air that it’s impossible to go about without feeling forgiving, if not delusional — even the notorious smog can almost be thought of as a kind of intense fog.

The large-scale makeover is being felt in the art world as well. In the most popular art district, Dashanzi, a former factory area also known simply as “798” after the building complex that once stood there, spacious white cube galleries are interspersed with skimpy labor tents, and construction workers walk around every day amid hundreds of gallery-goers. Repaving the streets, alleys, and sidewalks of 798 is part of the government’s citywide effort to create a slick Beijing in time for the games. While this could be read as one of many signs that the state acknowledges the stature the Chinese contemporary art scene has acquired, both locally and abroad, the government has yet to invest much in state-funded art museums. It is predominantly commercial galleries and artist-initiated spaces — the latter most often turned into commercial entities in a matter of months in order to survive — that present contemporary art in China, most of it by local or national artists.

In 2004, Wang Yihan, formerly director of Indonesia’s Soka Art Center, founded the China International Gallery Exposition (CIGE) with a vision of promoting “internationalism, professionalism, and futurism” in China’s contemporary art scene. The prospect of an international art fair for the city of Beijing sounded promising, and indeed, the inaugural edition left a strong impression. For its second edition, in 2005, CIGE lured major international galleries including Galerie Art: Concept from France, Galerie Christian Nagel from Germany, and Gagosian from the United States. However, like many other exhibitors, these high-profile dealers opted not to return the following year, and just what happened during and directly after the 2005 fair is still somewhat muddy.  

What is clear is this: CIGE’s original staff divided into two camps, one staying on and the other founding a second fair called Art Beijing. Since its launch, Art Beijing has explicitly claimed to be the premier international art fair in China, and although the list of participating galleries in past editions has yet to validate that claim, rumor has it that the third edition, taking place in September 2008 — will prove different.  

In the meantime, the fifth edition of CIGE, which took place April 25–28 at Beijing’s World Trade Center building, confirmed that fair’s international standing despite some unevenness in the stature of the exhibitors and the quality of the artwork. CIGE 2008 brought together 80 galleries from 22 countries, as well as a number of nonprofits and art institutions. For all its global aspirations, however, this year’s fair stood out largely for its focus on artists and galleries from Asia. This theme was most palpable with “Mapping Asia,” one of the five curatorial divisions of the fair, in which 33 emerging artists from Asia were each given a solo booth.

Two highlights were exhibitions by Indonesia’s Soka Art Center of homegrown artist Eko Nugroho and by China’s Vitamin Creative Space of Chinese artist Duan Jianyu. Nugroho’s display included paintings in bright, solid colors with bold brushstrokes and geometric lines, as well as a stunning tapestry piece about Indonesian society. Duan’s paintings, meanwhile, some including sculptural replicas of figures depicted in the works, are more subdued, presenting contemporary still lifes and village landscapes in subtle skin-tone and sandy colors. The works are dusty-looking, with diffuse blurring where figures meet ground.  

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.

These kinds of exchanges are fuel for the hopes of internationalism that seem to be sweeping the Chinese art world, with its up-and-coming fairs, as well as the country at large, as its plays host to the Olympics — and for good reason. They may well be where the future success of China lies.