Every year Art Taipei presents a theme to highlight trends in the art market both at home and abroad. In 2008 it was technology, a nod to the popularity of new media art. Last year it was the environment, reflecting the growing awareness of climate change. This year’s theme was globalization. Savvy, inclusive and international, it appeared to have all the attributes that Taiwan’s pre-eminent art fair wants to project.
Limited funds and poor organization, however, meant that it didn’t live up to the hype.
“Globalization” never materialized at the exhibition last month, demonstrating the formidable hurdles Art Taipei has to overcome before it becomes truly international. The NT$3 million (US$95,700) originally assigned to the theme was instead used toward accommodations for collectors, half of whom came from Japan and a third from China. None came from North America or Europe, let alone South America, Africa or the Middle East.
This is somewhat surprising. As art fair fatigue and a lagging economy continue to plague the Western art market, many galleries have been looking to Asia to make up for sluggish sales at home. The excitement generated by the success of Art Hong Kong, held at the end of May, led many to believe that it would be a bumper year for Art Taipei. But a lack of interest from international collectors and art institutions, combined with the fact that most Taiwanese collectors focus on art made close to home, suggests that Art Taipei will remain a regional art fair.
“There isn’t the energy [of previous years],” Eslite Gallery’s Jenning King (金振寧) said on Aug. 20, the fair’s first official day.
A Swiss gallerist echoed King’s sentiment.
“It’s so hard to stay awake. I don’t know if it’s jetlag or the excitement of being here,” she said with undisguised sarcasm. “Has anything happened?”
It was a question many participating galleries were asking that Friday. Although there were “interesting encounters,” in the words of New York-based Sundaram Tagore of Sundaram Tagore Gallery, few collectors were buying.
Friday’s frustration was inevitable because the majority of sales are traditionally made on the first two days, which serve as a barometer for the rest of the art fair. Art Taipei had opened Thursday evening to VIP guests, and the situation hadn’t improved much by Sunday.
“I’ve barely sold anything,” said a sheepish Kosaku Kanechika of Tomio Koyama Gallery, sitting below an enormous ceramic plate by Yoshitomo Nara, a well-known Japanese artist the gallery represents.
By the afternoon of Tuesday, the sixth and final day, the atmosphere was a little more buoyant. Art Taipei saw NT$550 million in transactions, a modest increase from NT$500 million the previous year, with NT$420 million going to local galleries and NT$120 million to overseas galleries — the latter a disappointing figure because those galleries made up almost 50 percent of the sellers.
Although Art Taipei saw a significant increase in the number of exhibitors — 110 this year compared to 78 last year — there was a noticeable decrease in the number of visitors: 40,000, compared with 50,000 last year.
The number of contemporary art fairs in East Asia billed as “international” has exploded over the past few years. In addition to longer-established exhibitions such as Art Taipei, Art Singapore, Art Tokyo and the Korean International Art Fair, there has been the addition over the past five years of Art Hong Kong, Beijing Contemporary Art Fair, ShContemporary in Shanghai, and numerous smaller “boutique” art fairs held in hotels.
“Hong Kong, Taiwan, Shanghai, Beijing and Singapore are increasingly alike. These different markets are becoming more and more like one market,” said veteran gallerist Emily Chao (趙琍), director of Eslite Gallery.
Of the more than 30 international and local galleries that the Taipei Times spoke with over the course of the six-day fair, all agreed that Art Taipei’s services, from translation to the professionalism of its staff, were excellent. But if art fairs in Asia are indistinguishable, what will attract collectors — an art fair’s raison d’etre — to Taiwan?
Terry W. Huang (黃文叡), vice president of New York-based Motif Art Group, said overseas collectors tend to skip Art Taipei because it is seen as a domestic or regional art fair.
“It is easy to sell [Taiwanese art] to collectors in Taiwan, but not to those collectors outside Taiwan without the same or similar cultural background. We cannot find any collectors outside of Taiwan collecting Taiwanese art,” Huang said.
And just as international collectors express little interest in Taiwanese art, Taiwanese collectors tend to focus on Chinese, Japanese and Taiwanese artists.
“[Taiwanese collectors] don’t appreciate the art they don’t know. The culture here is very localized,” Huang said.
If Taiwanese collectors want to buy work by one of the Young British Artists, for example, they are likely to head off to Hong Kong and buy there, as did a Taiwanese collector who purchased a Damien Hirst for US$2.1 million.
“Taiwanese collectors [buy] Asian art, and of course some of them collect Western art, but still not a lot. What we try to do is educate them. For [galleries from] Korea, China and Japan, they are pretty certain what will sell in Taiwan. But Western galleries aren’t that sure because they don’t have as much experience here,” said Joanne Chen (陳韋晴), Art Taipei’s marketing director.
Attracting big-name international galleries is crucial because their clients will often follow, or at least pay attention.
“We invited higher-level and established galleries because [they] bring established collectors,” Chen said.
It is a strategy that worked well for Art Hong Kong. The four-day art fair attracted 155 galleries from 29 countries and 46,115 visitors, up 65 percent from 2009. Although Art Hong Kong doesn’t make its transaction records public, judging from the enthusiasm voiced by those who visited, it did very well.
As in previous years, Art Taipei invited leading international galleries such as Pace, White Cube and Gagosian — all of whom participated in Art Hong Kong — to set up booths in Taipei. None did.
Nick Simunovic of Gagosian, for example, came to Art Taipei but didn’t bring any art. Instead, he went directly to the VIP room, “took out a laptop,” Chen said, and used that as a virtual platform to sell — a strategy that is becoming increasingly common at art fairs.
Art Hong Kong also benefits from peripherals, timing its fair to coincide with Christie’s spring auction, when collectors are already in the city. In a similar vein, Art Basel benefits from the Venice Biennial and Shanghai Contemporary has the World Expo.
“What does Art Taipei have? Sun Moon Lake? The National Palace Museum?” Chen asked. “This is a problem that we’ve had to face over the past few years,” she said.
Curiously, this year’s Art Taipei didn’t take advantage of the Taipei Biennial, now running at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, or the International Flower Expo, beginning in November. The latter two events overlap and might have enticed more overseas galleries and collectors to come to Art Taipei.
For the international galleries that did come, many expressed dismay at the length of Art Taipei: six days in total.
“I don’t think that’s a good thing. Make it one hour later and one day shorter,” said Paul Pepping, manager of international relations at Gallery Zokyudo. The exhibition closed at 7pm most days.
For international galleries — especially those hailing from Europe or North America — the added days are an extra expense that they fear might not be recouped during the fair.
As Art Taipei struggles to attract international galleries, it also has difficulty luring directors and curators from overseas art institutions, which lends an art fair a degree of prestige and provides a necessary “educational” component.
Art Hong Kong serves as an interesting comparison. It brought in a who’s who of influential art market operators including Richard Armstrong, director of the Guggenheim Museum; Shinji Kohmoto, chief curator at the National Museum of Art, Kyoto; Nigel Hurst, director of the Saatchi Gallery, London; Maxwell Hearn and Douglas Dillon, curators at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Department of Asian Art; and Jan Stuart, head of Asia, British Museum, to name a few of the marquee guests in attendance.
“By having these kinds of people come to the fair, we can maximize our exposure. Say an American curator comes and she likes a work that we have. Then maybe in the future we would have an opportunity to collaborate,” King said.
Art Taipei’s invited directors and curators mirrored the galleries who set up booths: They were regional specialists from Japan and China who focused on the commercial side. Similar to its problem luring international galleries, Art Taipei couldn’t find any international directors or curators willing to participate.
Peng Pei-chang (彭北辰), a well-known collector who travels to several art fairs every year, said the increased number of galleries this year wasn’t matched by a corresponding increase in quality.
“Art Taipei needs to become more specialized [so that] participating galleries show the best work of the artists they represent,” he said.
It was a sentiment echoed by Tagore.
“You have to create a distinction. If you have only so many [collectors], either you tap into the same clients and then expand that side of the equation. But if only art fairs are expanding we are all going to get hurt because we are part of the same system,” Tagore said.
April 28 to May 4 During the Japanese colonial era, a city’s “first” high school typically served Japanese students, while Taiwanese attended the “second” high school. Only in Taichung was this reversed. That’s because when Taichung First High School opened its doors on May 1, 1915 to serve Taiwanese students who were previously barred from secondary education, it was the only high school in town. Former principal Hideo Azukisawa threatened to quit when the government in 1922 attempted to transfer the “first” designation to a new local high school for Japanese students, leading to this unusual situation. Prior to the Taichung First
The Ministry of Education last month proposed a nationwide ban on mobile devices in schools, aiming to curb concerns over student phone addiction. Under the revised regulation, which will take effect in August, teachers and schools will be required to collect mobile devices — including phones, laptops and wearables devices — for safekeeping during school hours, unless they are being used for educational purposes. For Chang Fong-ching (張鳳琴), the ban will have a positive impact. “It’s a good move,” says the professor in the department of
On April 17, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) launched a bold campaign to revive and revitalize the KMT base by calling for an impromptu rally at the Taipei prosecutor’s offices to protest recent arrests of KMT recall campaigners over allegations of forgery and fraud involving signatures of dead voters. The protest had no time to apply for permits and was illegal, but that played into the sense of opposition grievance at alleged weaponization of the judiciary by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to “annihilate” the opposition parties. Blamed for faltering recall campaigns and faced with a KMT chair
Article 2 of the Additional Articles of the Constitution of the Republic of China (中華民國憲法增修條文) stipulates that upon a vote of no confidence in the premier, the president can dissolve the legislature within 10 days. If the legislature is dissolved, a new legislative election must be held within 60 days, and the legislators’ terms will then be reckoned from that election. Two weeks ago Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) proposed that the legislature hold a vote of no confidence in the premier and dare the president to dissolve the legislature. The legislature is currently controlled
RSS