Taiwan’s pre-eminent art fair, Art Taipei, opens on Friday when 110 galleries from Taiwan and abroad set up shop in the Taipei World Trade Center, Hall 1, for what organizers hope to be a five-day frenzy of viewing, buying and selling.
Painting, sculpture, video and installation will all be on display and with the number of participants up by 25 percent from last year, it appears that the art market downturn is a distant memory as galleries are confident that buyers will be freer with their pocketbooks.
Photography will take center stage this year as Art Taipei predicts that the medium — traditionally under-represented both at Art Taipei and at Taiwan’s galleries — will become the next in thing to collect.
“People think that anyone can pick up a camera and take a photograph. That’s why buyers don’t usually collect photography,” said Joanne Chen (陳韋晴), Art Taipei’s marketing director.
Art Taipei hopes to turn this around by devoting one part of the exhibition space to galleries that are willing to exclusively display works by photographers. “We think that photography will be the next trend for collectors,” Chen said.
Nine local galleries — many of which already specialize in photography — stepped up to the plate and will exhibit works by local photographers such as Chen Chin-pao (陳敬寶), who has won Japan’s prestigious Higashikawa Award, and Taiwanese Photojournalism Award (台灣新聞年度攝影獎) winner Chou Ching-hui (周慶輝).
International galleries decided to stay away from the photo section because, “even if they sell all the works they still cannot cover all the costs of shipping and the booth fee,” Chen said.
In another effort to boost the medium’s profile, photographs by winners and finalists of the 2010 Sony World Photography Awards will be exhibited for the first time at Art Taipei. Arranged by gallerist and curator Caprice Horn, the collection showcases the very best photographs from across the world in genres ranging from photojournalism to fine art.
“The international character of these winning images is a testament to the inclusivity of these global awards. Each of these pictures has a place, a purpose, shows skill, and forethought,” Horn wrote in Art Taipei’s catalogue.
Horn will also give a lecture, The Vision and Trend of World Photography, on Saturday at 2:30pm. It will be followed by a second lecture, An Overview of the Adventure of Asia Photography, by photographers Chiu Yi-chien (邱奕堅) and Suan Hooi-wah (全會華), who will discuss the state of photography in Asia.
The addition of photography follows in the footsteps of Ela — Video, a thematic section created five years ago to promote new media art and which Chen said has become one of the most popular destinations for visitors. Buyers have also noticed the potential of video art as an investment — especially over the past two years — because it is cheaper to collect than painting or sculpture. Ela — Video can be found in Section C of the fair.
The photography and new media sections, however, still make up a small proportion of Art Taipei. The majority of work on display is modern to contemporary paintings and sculptures shown by galleries from the US, China, Japan, Spain, South Korea and Taiwan.
For complete details in Chinese and English go to: www.art-taipei.com
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