Professional Feel and Mixed Market at ShContemporary

Photo by David Gursky

The Shanghai Exhibition Center hosted the second edition of ShContemporary.

Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin

At Lehmann Maupin's booth: Jennifer Steinkamp, "It’s a Nice Day for a White Wedding" (2008)

Damien Hirst Tara Donovan Jennifer Steinkamp Lucio Fontana Ling Jian Stephan Balkenhol John M Armleder Louis Bourgeois

Send a letter to the Editor

Save to Del.icio.us Digg this

The fair had a lot going for it this year. Shanghai was a natural stop on a kind of Grand Tour of biennials taking place in Asia this fall, including stops in Guangzhou, Gwangju, and Yokohama. And there was plenty else to see in the city, including the Shanghai Biennale, the Shanghai Art Fair (which has been around since 1997), and plenty of gallery exhibitions, from a meditative new video by Chinese artist Yang Fudong at ShanghART to a sprawling project involving mass-produced dog sculptures by another Chinese artist, Qiu Anxiong, at Contrasts Gallery’s new warehouse space.

Given all the events, some big guns were on hand. Miami collectors Mera and Don Rubell, along with son Jason, were seen strolling the aisles. (The fair had cleverly flown in these recognizable collectors to participate in two panel discussions.) “My parents were here in 2001,” said Jason. “It was time to come back. This is an exploratory trip.”

The fair also initiated a new Outdoor Projects section, anchored by Zhan Wang’s monumental stainless steel scholar's rocks, which provided a dramatic entrance courtyard, and most dealers and visitors agreed that the quality of the material in the fair, what with new exhibitors like PaceWildenstein, had gone up since last year. Jerome Sans, director of the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) in Beijing, said ShContemporary is “the most promising” fair in Asia. “The level is very high. China deserves a fair on this level.” Asia Society director Melissa Chiu, in town from New York for the Shanghai Biennale, echoed his sentiments. “It’s an improvement on last year and provides a great focus on the Asia Pacific region and Asian galleries.”

But there were also hurdles. A new fair, Showcase Singapore, launched in Singapore the day after ShContemporary’s first VIP preview and may have stolen some of its fire. And Shanghai’s hefty taxes make completing deals at the fair prohibitively expensive — there’s around 30 percent import tax and roughly 15 percent sales tax on top of that — leaving some dealers wistful for the new ART HK - Hong Kong International Art Fair, which launched last spring and doesn't suffer from high taxes.

An Improved Look, but an Uncertain Market
Despite the fact that by all accounts ShContemporary looked better than it did last year, one was left wondering, ‘What kind of material sells best here?’

One thing is for sure — contemporary Indian art is soaring. In the first few VIP hours, Bodhi Art, which has locations in Berlin, Mumbai, New York, and Singapore, nearly sold out its booth of works by painters Jagannath Panda, Jitish Kallat, and others, priced between $75,000 and $110,000. Half of the collectors were Chinese; the rest were Indians and Europeans.

Some galleries opted to spotlight iconic work from the West, only to get a lackluster reaction. Korean gallery Kukje displayed, front and center in the booth, a spot painting and a butterfly painting by Damien Hirst. “Last year there were some well known rich people looking for Hirsts,” said the gallery’s Yvonne Yu, who added that all the collectors they dealt with at last year’s fair were Chinese. “We didn't see those people this year. Lots of people ask for the prices, but no one is buying.” (The fair’s attendance was 25,000, about the same as last year.)

What they were buying, Yu said, were pieces priced at $30–50,000 or less. “We did sales but it wasn’t extraordinary,” she added. “It’s less crowded, it’s quiet.”

On the fair’s first day, the gallery sold a photograph from Korean-born artist Hye Rim Lee's “Crystal City” series to a Chinese collector. It depicts a group of transparent objects that on closer inspection turn out to be sex toys. Asked why it wasn’t censored, Yu shrugged. “Maybe they didn't look closely enough.”