A tale of two new fairs in China

Photo Shanghai and Art in the City kicked off a niche and collaborative season

By Lisa Movius. Web only

Published online: 17 September 2014

The visitors at Photo Shanghai were just as happy to take photos as they were to view  them

Caucasian babies often attract attention in China, but they rarely set off photographic near-riots as on the final day of Photo Shanghai, a new art fair that opened earlier this month. Many of the thousands of photography fans who jostled into the Shanghai Exhibition Centre every day touting huge digital cameras and gear packs came less to see photographs than to take them. Pretty girls, artsy outfits, even cracks in the floor and queues for the toilets attracted keen amateur paparazzi. One foreign father and young child were mobbed by photo enthusiasts for over an hour, posing gamely for the snapping throngs.

It was a flashy, astonishingly viral debut for Photo Shanghai (5-7 September), the first large photo fair in Greater China. Created by the World Photography Organisation (WPO) to promote photographic art in Asia, it attracted 2,000 visitors to its opening night on 3 September and 25,000 over four days. “If we’d had just 8,000 visitors, we would have been delighted. It is amazing how engaged they are,” said Scott Gray, WPO’s managing director. “We have a real chance to do education, such as about editions, that [a photograph] is not just a JPG.” He added that the fair did no social media marketing—the crowds had done it for them—proving the medium’s appeal in the region. 

Though actual collectors were eclipsed by the enthusiastic public, many of the 42 participating galleries – half from China, half international – reported acceptable sales, and complimented the organisation. “Galleries are not complaining [about the crowds], which is a testimony to what we are doing,” said the fair director Alexander Montague-Sparey. “It is the first year, and if you live in Shanghai you should be able to come to this.”

Photo Shanghai was the first of two new art fairs launching in Shanghai this year, over two busy, back-to-back weekends; it was followed by fellow newcomer Art in the City, at the K11 Art Mall and Museum (10-14 September). There was also the returning SH Contemporary (SH) at the Shanghai Exhibition Centre (12-14 September). Hot on its heels comes another new fair, the much-buzzed West Bund Art & Design Fair (25-29 September), and the second edition of the boutique fair Art021 (12-16 November) later this season. The two successful debuts at the beginning of the season suggest that Shanghai’s autumn of art fairs may shape up to be very local, very niche and collaborative– like the city’s art scene itself.

Unlike Photo Shanghai’s specialist medium, with international organisers and exhibitors, including Camera Work, Flowers, and A. Galerie, Art in the City consisted of only 15 of Shanghai’s leading galleries, with room-like booths in the K11 Art Museum. Overlapping galleries included ShanghArt, Aike-Dellarco and Vanguard. “The curated, self-contained rooms are more like museums or a gallery; they make it more organic, and with just 15 of them, it is not overwhelming,” said the co-founder Massimo Torrigiani, who directed SH Contemporary in 2011 and 2012. He joined with Davide Quadrio, the founder of the influential Shanghai institutions BizArt and Art Hub Asia, and the fellow SH alumna Donna Chai to launch Art in the City along with the K11 Art Mall and several government partners as part of a larger, year-round platform, with an app and events. Torrigiani described it as less an art fair than a “curated selling exhibition in collaboration with galleries”. 

Torrigiani stressed that in China, “galleries are the front tier. Art in the City is a collaboration of the Chinese art world, not the market. If it were not for galleries, there would be no video, no photography here, and they are building things step by step. Independent means not speculative. These galleries promote art that is not banal, not conformist.” Though a commercial fair in a non-profit space, he explains, Art in the City is less about sales than promoting galleries to the young, Chinese, white-collar workers who frequent the mall upstairs, of whom 10,000 visited over ten days. In fact, several galleries brought work not for sale. “They brought their best, whatever represents the gallery. In K11, the ambiguity is embedded; we can't be hypercritical of it. China lacks layers of institutions, they are its weakest point.”

“When I was doing SH Contemporary, I realised that there is a lot to do; you can really scale down in Shanghai, even for very ambitious projects, and be fantastic for the Shanghai art scene,” Torrigiani says. “Other fairs are bringing in things from abroad, showing international artists and important galleries. There is a lot to be done for this city.”

Photo Shanghai and Art in the City collaborated with shared lectures and buses between events, and also tied into local institutions, such as a photography exhibition at the Minsheng Museum. “We are so different… and understood that there are only advantages and no conflict in collaboration,” says Torrigiani. “There is a collaborative spirit in Shanghai that I have not witnessed in many other places in the world. At first I thought it was an illusion, but eventually I realised it really exists. We want to celebrate the history of Shanghai building its own art world over the last 15 years.”

There will be a detailed report on SH Contemporary in our October issue, published on 29 September.

Art in the City consisted of only 15 of Shanghai’s leading galleries, with room-like booths in the K11 Art Museum

http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/A-tale-of-two-new-fairs-in-China/35665