2008-11-21T11:08:14Z RedBox Copyright 2008, RedBox SPHPBLOG http://www.redboxtudio.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry080930-182145 1970-01-01T00:00:00Z 1970-01-01T00:00:00Z http://www.redboxtudio.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry080920-180544 1970-01-01T00:00:00Z 1970-01-01T00:00:00Z A Vanity Fair web exclusive slideshow of photographs by Jonathan Becker

"Collecting China: With an explosion of museums, galleries, and prices, China has become the hottest stop on the international art circuit, as the emerging cultural capitals of Beijing and Shanghai witness a rush of new money, unleashed talent, and national pride."

Artists in their studios, directors in their galleries show off the wealth of attention (and money) that has flooded the contemporary art market in China. The starving artist and marginalized artistic community are images of fiction in this photo series of glamour and luxury: Painter Liu Ye dons a suit in his minimal studio as his muse langoriously drapes her barely clothed body in his lap; Zhang Huan playfully shows off his taxidermied bull series in his enormous Shanghai warehouse/studio; Contrasts Gallery owner Pearl Lam unabashedly displays her distinctive style of decadence.

Some artists may long for the early days when the idealized version of an artist rebelled against the mainstream and lived only for their art. Nowadays, some artists live for their art to launch them into the elite life of the luxury mainstream.

Having made the top auction records amongst his peers, Yue Minjun's large scaled paintings of the supposed anonymous man laughing in the face of social adversity having found a means for escape, now laughs at those who have not figured out their means for riches having successfully figured out the system. ]]> http://www.redboxtudio.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry071109-192312 2007-11-10T00:00:00Z 2007-11-10T00:00:00Z (Private collection)
In conjunction with Asian Week in London, Eskenazi, one of the world's leading dealers of oriental art, presents a historic exhibition of contemporary landscape paintings by Li Huayi (Nov 1 -30, 10 Clifford Street, London, W1).

"That a Chinese painter born in 1948 to a wealthy Shanghai family who lived through the Cultural Revolution came out unscathed is astonishing enough. But that he should have become a master of unparalleled magnitude who draws on the age-old tradition of the Chinese literati while taking it to an entirely new stage, is truly astounding.

This is the first time that Li's work is displayed in Europe. The exhibition of 20 paintings in ink and color on paper, all but one of which were done in 2006 and 2007, is bound to be remembered as a historic landmark."

See complete article by Souren Melikian in IHT Nov. 3]]> http://www.redboxtudio.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry071102-210935 2007-11-03T00:00:00Z 2007-11-03T00:00:00Z www.droogdesign.nl
A Human Touch, droog's travelling exhibition, opens November 8th at the Yong He Art Museum in Beijing. The presentation on Chinese mainland continues until December 9th.
The name says it: A Human Touch connects the product with its user. Themes like simplicity, imperfection and familiarity come to an expression in about 125 droog pieces. The installation is laid out similar to that of a film set – complete with tables, cupboards, lamps, and chairs – subtly coming to life as they are merged with people.
The exhibition is hosted by Yong He Art Museum. It is a new art center (est. 2006) for design, new media art, digital art and contemporary art, located in an 1,800 square metres space on the 13th floor of the Ge Hua Tower in Beijing.
A Human Touch
November 8th - December 9th 2007
Yong He Art Museum, Beijing]]> http://www.redboxtudio.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry071029-211626 2007-10-30T00:00:00Z 2007-10-30T00:00:00Z
The opening will feature an exhibition from the Ullens colleciton focusing on the new wave in Chinese contemporary art that emerged in the mid-1980s.

*The Guy & Myriam Ullens Foundation was set up in Switzerland in 2002, and is an active supporter of the Chinese art world. It sponsors events and exhibitions of Chinese art all over the world, including the Venice Biennale Chinese projects in 2003 and 2005; lends pieces from its collection to museums and art centers around the world; and organizes major exhibitions both in China and Europe. Its recent exhibitions include:

. "Beijing Palace Museum"(Beijing, May 2002);
. "Paris-Pékin" (Paris, October 2002);
. "All under Heaven"(Antwerp, March 2004);
. "The Monk and the Demon" (Lyon, June 2004, in collaboration with the Guangdong Museum of Art and Lyon Museum of Contemporary Art).

** In a NYTimes interview, Baron Ullens explained that he and his wife, Myriam, would have to operate the center technically as a commercial space, even though they wanted to run it as a nonprofit. Under the Chinese bureaucracy a nonprofit space would have been more closely overseen by the government. Yet in practice, he said, the center — to be called the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art — will be noncommercial.

]]> http://www.redboxtudio.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry071028-195824 2007-10-29T00:00:00Z 2007-10-29T00:00:00Z
(From White Cube Gallery | Editions)

Damien Hurst's "For the Love of God" skull, made of 8,601 diamonds ( 1,106.18 carats,platinum and human teeth is the most expensive piece of art ever created, costing between $16 and $20 million to make, and $99 million to buy. Criticism for lack of philanthropy aside, he succeeds in accentuating the irony of art in the marketplace.

In respect to Chinese contemporary artists fetching prices over $5million dollars for canvases less than 10 years old with questionable archival durability, Damien Hirst's art is by far the better deal for investment sake. In just the past three years, international auction houses have created auctions specific to Chinese contemporary art and consistently report sales above estimates and a handful of works breaking previous records coming in over $1million US dollars. Private deals of these hot ticket artworks behind close doors have been seen to double their market price within the same year. These canvases are not sprinkled in diamond dust, so where is their value?
]]> http://www.redboxtudio.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry071017-233859 2007-10-18T00:00:00Z 2007-10-18T00:00:00Z
September 22, 2007:
Venues and artists noted (+ indicates positive response, - negative)

Arario Gallery (Jiuchang Art District) + Park Seo-bo + Xiao Yu
PYO Gallery (Jiuchang) - They (formerly Tamen)
National Art Musuem (NAMOC) - for poor presentation and lack of good curation
Long March Space (798 Art District) + Japanese artists show
Beijing Tokyo Art Projects (798) "
Inter Arts Center (798) "
Galeria Continua (798) + Anish Kapoor
Tang Gallery (798) + (for impressive scale) Shen Shaomin
Beijing Commune (798) + Yue Minjun
Universal Studios (Caochangdi Art Zone) + Kan Xuan, Liu Wei, Qiu Xiaofei, Qiu Anxiong
Urs Meile (Caochangdi) - Rémy Markowitsch
China Art & Archives Warehouse (Caochangdi) + for Ai Weiwei's vision and architecture monopoly

Full Article see Frieze Magazine Oct 16 2007 | Comment | China]]> http://www.redboxtudio.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry071016-184401 2007-10-17T00:00:00Z 2007-10-17T00:00:00Z http://www.redboxtudio.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry071001-201454 2007-10-02T00:00:00Z 2007-10-02T00:00:00Z A Forbes.com article by Barnaby Conrad III responding to the maturing status of China's art market in light of recent auctions and art fairs.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that when a nominally Communist country becomes rich overnight it must be in want of building cranes and boatloads of homegrown contemporary art. China is no exception.

During its March 2007 sale in New York, Sotheby's (nyse: BID - news - people ) auctioned off $25 million of freshly minted Chinese paintings--and the salesroom was filled with Chinese. The top lot was Bloodline: Three Comrades, an oil by 49-year-old Zhang Xiaogang depicting sad-eyed survivors of China's self-destructive past. It sold for more than $2.11 million.

"Just a few years ago this market was absolutely dormant," notes Dutch-Scottish art dealer Michael Goedhuis, who shows Chinese art at his galleries in New York, London and Beijing. "Now it's galloping. It's an erratic market, but as more new buyers enter the bidding, the prices will shoot higher."

The market for Chinese art began to rise three years ago with auctions in Hong Kong, the People's Republic and finally abroad. In 2004 Christie's only sold about $18 million worth of postwar and contemporary Chinese art; in 2006 those sales hit $120 million. And the increase wasn't just due to volume; individual artists started developing their own international followings. In 2003, for example, a portrait by the aforementioned Zhang Xiaogang sold for just $76,500 at Christie's Hong Kong; in 2006 the same painting was auctioned at Christie's London for more than $1.4 million. By 2007, all the auction houses were scoring big-time.

"Today there are really two art auction markets in China," says New York-- based art dealer Martha Sutherland. (Full disclosure: Sutherland is married to the author.) "One is for traditional brush-and-ink painters who come out of a centuries-long tradition of scholarly painting and poetic contemplation of the sublime landscape. The other is the contemporary scene, where the big prices-- and artistic egos--have full rein."

In spite of the growing whispers of an auction price bubble, the art scene in China is still expanding. "There is an almost volcanic eruption of creativity in China today, from art and film to design and architecture," notes Goedhuis. "Market concerns aside, it is a very exciting new world."

Intellectually, the new Chinese art boom began in February 1989, when the National Art Museum in Beijing held a watershed exhibition called "China Avant- Garde," which was soon shut down by the government. Just four months later came the Tiananmen Square uprising that left hundreds dead. At that time, the only people able to afford art were expats, diplomats and Westerners.

Almost two decades later, the growth of China's art market is reflected in the lively gallery scenes of its two largest cities, Beijing and Shanghai. In the 1980s, Beijing's artists established themselves in a crumbling factory area called Dashanzi, also known as the 798 District. Galleries and restaurants soon followed. "Up until 2004, there were only three strong commercial galleries in Beijing and many artists couldn't get representation," says Australian Brian Wallace, who founded Red Gate Gallery in 1991, Beijing's first foreign-owned gallery. "Now there are about 20 top galleries and hundreds of others ranging from shop fronts to artists' co-ops."

The latest hotbed for artists and galleries is Caochangdi Village, located on the northeastern outskirts of Beijing. It was spearheaded seven years ago by one of the preeminent Chinese artists, Ai Weiwei, who built a giant studio for himself and opened a gallery called China Art Archives and Warehouse. The entrepreneurial Ai has recently been joined in Caochangdi by Swiss dealer Urs Meile and by Meg Maggio, an American lawyer and gallery owner who recently opened Pékin Fine Arts in a building designed by the protean Ai. A 20-year veteran of the Beijing art scene, Maggio counts the London-based advertising mogul and über-collector Charles Saatchi as one of her clients.

Meanwhile, Shanghai has long been famed for its aesthetics and enterprise, but it was a foreigner, Swiss-born Lorenz Helbling, who founded its leading gallery, ShanghArt. He currently represents more than 30 artists from all over China. "Shanghai is less money-oriented than Beijing and there is less talk about prices and marketing," he says. "You can really look at the art and share ideas about it."

That said, buying good art in China can be difficult for a foreigner, even for a collector or art dealer who is familiar with the culture. Many of the top artists once desperate to show their work now resist exclusive gallery representation. And then there's the language barrier. Sutherland is one of the few Western dealers outside China who is fluent in Mandarin. "It helps," she says, "to know what's going on." She opened her Manhattan gallery in 1999 to show traditional artists from China and Taiwan, but soon embraced hip young painters like Yang Mian and Chen Wenbo.

How far can prices go? Recently a 1939 oil by Xu Beihong sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong for $9.2 million--a record for a Chinese painting. Though the artist is long dead, the painting, Put Down Your Whip, is politically significant, referring to the 1931 invasion of China by the Japanese. It was sold over the phone to an anonymous bidder.

What government bureaucrats think about all these potentially subversive artists is unclear. Anything involving sex, blood or excrement--standard fare in the decadent West--seems to pass muster, but when art turns political, things get dicey. After the Tiananmen massacre, the artist Sheng Qi, now 43, cut off his little finger in protest. Two years ago the Red Gate Gallery in Beijing exhibited photographs by Sheng that juxtaposed his mutilated hand with idealized pictures from the Cultural Revolution. The government shut down the show. A painting depicting Mao sitting with Hitler and Stalin was also removed from an exhibition.

"The Chinese government has gradually realized some freedom of expression in the arts is okay," said David Tung, a young Chinese-American from Texas who serves as deputy director of the Long March Space gallery in Beijing. He cited the career trajectory of now-famous artist Yang Shaobin. "Yang arrived in Beijing in the '80s as a poor artist and began working in the language of political Pop and Cynical Realism. The authorities harassed him. Today, he and other former outcasts are being 'embraced' as representatives of a new 'cultural industry,' which the city of Beijing is heavily promoting," says Tung. Yang's edgy paintings highlighting the dangerous work conditions of coal miners fetch several hundred thousand dollars each.

But not all of the work evokes Tiananmen or hard times. One evening I dined with Prof. Huang Du, a widely respected figure in the Beijing and Shanghai art worlds. Originally from Shaanxi Province, Huang, now 43, had studied painting at the Central Art Academy of Beijing but morphed into a curator and historian. What accounts for the burst of new imagery? "Many of the younger artists," said Huang Du, "didn't live through the Cultural Revolution. They didn't go through that period of suppressed individualism. Few scars. They paint in the present. And a number have been inspired by Western graphic tradition, including Pop and comic books."

Our dinner companions were two successful young artists who proved his point, Yang Mian and Chen Wenbo. Both in their late 30s, they had studied at the Sichuan Academy of Art and come to Beijing to "make the scene." Yang Mian is known for his series entitled Standards of Beauty, oil paintings of beautiful Chinese women lifted from commercial advertising; one sees hints of Warhol and Alex Katz in the enlarged faces brushed in pastel tones that mimic cosmetics. The new paintings of Chen Wenbo are in a series entitled Pirated- Copyrighted No. 1, which embraces the slick poetics of commercialism: eight-foot-tall paintings of CDs that glisten and shimmer with color. He has also painted golf courses, billiard balls and cocktail glasses.

Ten years ago, Yang and Chen would have each eked out a living equivalent to that of a day laborer. That's changed: Their paintings now sell for $50,000 and higher. Chen drives a BMW 3 series, while Yang zips around in an Audi Quattro and maintains a 6,000-square-foot studio complex on the outskirts of Beijing. "I'm painting the good life in China," said Chen, winking as he hoists his glass. "Cheers."

The question remains: Is this stuff any good? "There is real aesthetic and cultural value to these artists," says Ingrid Dudek, a specialist in the Asian contemporary department at Christie's in New York. "And compared to prices of their Western counterparts--contemporary artists like Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons--they are not expensive."

Chinese art does have a tremendous breadth, from traditional ink painters and hyper-realists to abstractionists and freakish jokers. Take the performance artist Zhang Huan, who has been photographed covered with body armor made entirely of meat, as if some slab-happy butchers decided to sculpt the Incredible Hulk out of prime rib. Then there is Wang Guangyi, who derives satiric inspiration from Socialist-Realist posters of the Mao era. The painter Yue Minjun cranks out grinning men in a cartoony Pop style; one of his works sold for $1.38 million at Sotheby's March 2007 auction in New York.

In yet another signal that Chinese art has arrived, the rooftop terrace of the Metropolitan Museum in New York last year displayed an eye-popping artwork consisting of a 12-foot-long plastic replica of an open-jawed crocodile impaled with hundreds of steel knives, nail clippers and other sharp objects confiscated from international airline passengers by security guards. It was by Cai Guo-Qiang, a Chinese sculptor and performance artist who is the visual and special effects director of the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. The stadium itself was designed by Ai Weiwei and the trendsetting Swiss architectural firm Herzog & De Meuron.

Other artists make pictures that are more evocative of daily Chinese life, like Liu Xiaodong, known for a gritty series portraying villagers displaced by the flooding of the Yangtze River. One of the few well-known female artists, Yu Hong, portrays the average citizen on the street and at home in a straightforward, painterly manner. Zhang Jian also has an offbeat snapshot eye for intimate, everyday moments, whether capturing a woman in sunglasses strolling across Tiananmen Square or a man stopping by a canal for a smoke.

Just as we today regard French Impressionist pictures of top-hatted Parisians, so decades from now we may view works by contemporary Chinese painters as windows into Beijing life in the early 21st century. Ladies and gentlemen, start your collections.]]> http://www.redboxtudio.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry070926-032312 2007-09-26T00:00:00Z 2007-09-26T00:00:00Z