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-Borgex

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Another newcomer, Lehmann Maupin gallery of New York sold a chandelier piece by Korean artist Lee Bul to a mainland Chinese collector and several Jennifer Steinkamp video installations to collectors from Beijing, Germany, and Korea. Fairs like Shcontemporary can be as much about making connections for business down the road as they are about making sales. Lehmann Maupin sales director Courtney Plummer said an Asian designer expressed interest in working with the American Steinkamp on projects. And the gallery had become friendly with representatives of Beijing gallery Long March Space, whose booth was across the aisle, and might collaborate with them eventually. “There’s been more exchange of information than at your average art fair,” said Plummer.

The Bottom Line
But fairs aren’t just about making connections; they are, to put it crudely, also about making money. A window into China’s new money, and the attitudes that have developed around it, could be found at the booth of a wealth/lifestyle magazine called the Hurun Report, which puts out a publication akin to Forbes magazine’s rich list for China, and which just released its first art issue. “No one knows China’s rich better” boasted signs in the booth, which was throbbing with activity on the fair’s VIP preview night.

China’s richest are, of course, the individuals ShContemporary’s dealers would like to attract. But has the art market already developed too fast? Across the hall from the Hurun Report’s booth was German dealer Alexander Ochs, who has had a long-standing involvement with Chinese art. “Europe had 80 years to grow a market,” he said. “In China they have had four to five years.” He added that if the market is now cooling down a bit, that could spell a healthy correction. “People are learning to separate the important from the unimportant artists.”

At last year’s fair, Ochs sold out his booth in short order. By the end of the preview this year, he had so far parted with only several pieces, among them a sculpture made from neckties by Chinese Yin Xiuzhen, which went to a Chinese collector for €20,000, and two sculptures from an edition of 20 by Yang Shaobin for €12,000 each. (One went to a European collector, one to a Chinese.)

Vienna gallery Volker Diehl, which in April opened a new space in Moscow, sold Ling Jian’s painting Beijing Girl Mei Mei (2008) for $200,000. Hanging prominently in the gallery’s booth, the large work depicts an Asian girl’s face with smeared lipstick. “This fair was highly attended by Asian collectors and buyers,” said the gallery's international director Monica F. Eulitz. “The appeal and attraction is Asian art rather than Western.”

Much Asian art is getting expensive. At least one artist’s work, appearing in several booths at the fair, served to illustrate the rapid rise of Chinese art's prices. Feng Zhengjie makes large paintings in fluorescent colors, generally depicting the faces of dazed-looking women. At Art Basel Miami Beach last December, a painting of his sold for $180,000, but his prices rose drastically in the past year, particularly on the auction market. At ShContemporary, Beijing’s Xin Dong Cheng Gallery had a 2008 painting called Chinese Portrait for €390,000; Milan gallery Marella had a smaller 2008 painting for €260,000; and Beijing's Tang Contemporary had a large 2007 painting for €350,000. At the time of this writing, none of them had sold, though the galleries said they had many inquiries. “His works are very popular with Chinese collectors, and last year you could have sold three or four of them,” said Xin Dong Cheng director Daphne Mallet, “but not this year.” She blamed the artist’s high prices and the gloomy economic climate.