The largest show for contemporary art in Asia opened its doors for an expert audience yesterday in Shanghai.
ShContemporay, with 150 participating galleries from 20 countries, is the most important of three art shows running this week in the eastern Chinese city.
The other two in the framework of the so-called Art Compass are the Shanghai Biennale, running until Tuesday and the Shanghai Art Fair, which is open until Saturday.
This year’s biennale, titled Translocalmotion, deals with the effects of urbanization and is held the Shanghai art museum.
Half the artists at the second ShComtemporary, open to the public from Thursday to Saturday at the Shanghai Exhibition Center are from Asia, the remainder are from Europe and the US.
The exhibition, organized by fair director Lorenzo Rudolf shows works from classic modernism to contemporary works.
Highlights include the Best of Discovery featuring 32 up-and-coming Asia-Pacific artists and Outdoor Project with installations, performances and large-scale sculptures outside the exhibition building.
Both projects are to serve as a “catalyst between Eastern and Western art scenes,” a press release said.
Meanwhile, the organizers of SHContemporary down an enclosure yesterday that would have featured eight of Belgian artist Wim Delvoye’s tattooed pigs, after banning the exhibit at the fair.
Workers, escorted by security guards, dismantled the sty at the Shanghai Exhibition Center at 11:30am, said Xin Beijing Gallery’s manager Yu Tiantian, the dealer of Delvoye’s work. The pigs, tattooed with Walt Disney characters and LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA’s motif, were banned from the art fair. Yu wouldn’t say if the government had ordered the ban. Gu Zihua, spokesman for SHContemporary, declined to comment.
“It’s unbelievable how aggressive they are becoming in stopping this show,” Delvoye said today by phone from Shanghai. “We have collectors who’ve traveled to China all the way from Europe to see the pigs. They’re very disappointed.”
Shanghai, China’s financial hub, is vying with Beijing to be the country’s center for contemporary culture as it prepares to host the 2010 World Expo.
ArtBeijing opened in the Chinese capital on Friday with a preview of works to be shown by 100 galleries, half of them China-based and the remainder from Asia, the US and Europe. The fair’s highlight, an inaugural show specializing in photographic art, featured 15 galleries in 20 booths.
SHContemporary is aimed at enticing collectors to buy in a market hit by the world’s worst-performing equity index this year. Price gains in works by Liu Xiaodong and other Chinese contemporary artists have slowed and auction sales have shrunk as a drop in China’s equities erased US$2.3 trillion in market value this year.
Delvoye bred his pigs on a farm outside Beijing, letting his tattoos grow with the animals. The animals’ skins are sold for up to US$10,600 a piece. A canvas, marked with Walt Disney characters, was sold to Chanel SA and made into two bags, displayed at the fashion group’s Feb. 26 Mobile Art exhibition in Hong Kong, according to Delvoye’s spokeswoman Xia Jie.
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