Vadodara: Exquisite graphics created by city-based artist Barun Chowdhury will be showcased through a solo show titled, ‘Confessions into thin air’.
Solo-show Of Talent In Delhi Art Gallery |
About
Posts by :
Man behind Shaka Santa and other iconic sculptures at the Honolulu City Lights is retiring
The man behind many of the sculptures, like Shaka Santa,Tutu Mele and the holiday bears is retiring. Alex Ching has been helping out with the outside City Lights displays since
Juneau Afternoon: “Alaska Ink” group show from ten Juneau printmakers; Juneau Dance Theatre’s “Nutcracker”
Conversations today: Juneau Arts and Culture Center printmaking gallery show “Alaska Ink” plus Juneau Dance Theatre’s “Nutcracker.”
Sculptural 3D-Printed Sneakers
LV Cobra – Louis Vuitton presented Creative Director Pharrell Williams’ Men’s Pre-Fall 2024 Collection in Hong Kong and with it, the fully 3D-prin…
Spring 2024 Adult Announcements: Art, Architecture & Photography
Spring’s highlights explore gender, sexuality, activism, performance, self-expression, and the legacy of colonialism on the art world.
Top 10
Adrian Piper: Funk Lessons
Elvan Zabunyan. Afterall, Feb. 6 ($19.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-84638-264-2)
Zabunyan draws on conceptual artist Adrian Piper’s interactive performances from 1982 to 1984 to trace the history of funk and soul music, from its radical beginnings as the soundtrack to the civil rights movement to its modernized form marked by performative whitewashing.
The Art of Dying: Writings, 2019–2022
Peter Schjeldahl. Abrams Press, May 14 ($30, ISBN 978-1-4197-7324-2)
New Yorker art critic Schjeldahl (1942–2022) reflects on art, life, politics, and his battle against lung cancer in this posthumous collection.
Atlas of Never Built Architecture
Sam Lubell and Greg Goldin. Phaidon, May 22 ($150, ISBN 978-1-83866-653-8)
Comprising paintings, sketches, and digital renderings of unbuilt projects by Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, and others, this survey highlights architecture at its most visionary.
Giant Robot: Thirty Years of Defining Asian-American Pop Culture
Edited by Eric Nakamura. Drawn & Quarterly, May 7 ($42.95, ISBN 978-1-77046-713-2)
This compendium traces the history of Giant Robot, which began as a punk-rock zine in 1994 and expanded to galleries and retail stores on the east and west coasts in the 2000s.
The Heirloomist: 100 Treasures and the Stories They Tell
Shana Novak. Chronicle, Apr. 30 ($27.95, ISBN 978-1-7972-2440-4)
Still life photographer Novak pairs photographs of 100 objects, including an ordinary dinner fork and a Vietnam War–era fighter pilot’s helmet, with the stories of why their owners hold them dear.
Jay Matternes: Paleoartist and Wildlife Painter
Richard Milner, with Ian Tattersall. Abbeville, Apr. 23 ($45, ISBN 978-0-7892-1480-5)
This retrospective surveys the career of a pioneer in the field of natural history illustration, from his murals of extinct mammals to his drawings of birds found in America’s backyards.
The New Television: Video After Television
Edited by Rachel Churner, Rebecca Cleman, and Tyler Maxin. No Place, Apr. 23 ($45, ISBN 978-1-949484-11-3)
The impact of the groundbreaking 1974 Open Circuits conference on video art at MoMA is examined in this scholarly account.
A Programme of Absolute Disorder: Decolonising the Museum
Françoise Vergès. Pluto, June 20 ($27, ISBN 978-0-7453-4961-9)
It is time for a complete overhaul of the Western museum tradition, which was designed to showcase work stolen from other cultures, argues French political scientist and curator Vergès.
Reframing the Black Figure: An Introduction to Contemporary Black Figuration
Ekow Eshun. National Portrait Gallery, Apr. 2 ($19.95, ISBN 978-1-85514-548-1)
Drawn from an exhibition at London’s National Portrait Gallery, this collection gathers representations of the Black figure from more than 20 Black artists working in the U.K. and the U.S., including Lorna Simpson and Henry Taylor.
Tears of Gold: Portraits of Yazidi, Rohingya, and Nigerian Women
Hannah Rose Thomas. Plough, Feb. 6 ($49.95, ISBN 978-1-63608-080-2)
Spotlighting marginalized women from three continents and three religions, Thomas’s photographs and her subjects’ corresponding self-portraits reflect their struggles to reclaim their femininity and personhood after the traumas of ethnic displacement and sexual violence.
Art, Architecture & Photography longlist
ABRAMS
A Great Gay Book: Stories of Growth, Belonging, and Other Queer Possibilities by Ryan Fitzgibbon (May 21, $45, ISBN 978-1-4197-6678-7). The founder of Hello Mr. gathers selections from the magazine’s archive, including art, photography, essays, poetry, and interviews with the likes of Lady Bunny, John Waters, Ocean Vuong, and Hanya Yanagihara.
Watching New York: Street Style
A to Z by Johnny Cirillo (Apr. 16, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-4197-6994-8). Instagrammer Cirillo, aka “The People’s Paparazzo,” presents a compendium of New York City street style from pandemic fashion to the latest trends seen on the sidewalks of SoHo.
Cernunnos
Mark Ryden’s Yakalina Secrets by Mark Ryden (Apr. 16, $50, ISBN 978-1-4197-7190-3) collects more of the artist’s paintings and sketches of half-animal, half-plush mythical creatures and the lands they inhabit.
Figure 1
Bertram Brooker: When We Awake! by Michael Parke-Taylor (Mar. 5, $50, ISBN 978-1-77327-243-6) profiles a prominent figure in the Canadian modernist scene and curator of one of the first abstract painting exhibitions in Canada.
Fordham Univ.
Aeffect: The Affect and Effect of Artistic Activism by Stephen Duncombe (May 7, $29.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-5315-0651-3) examines what the trend of combining art and activism means for the future of socially impactful yet creative expression.
Breaking the Bronze Ceiling: Women, Memory, and Public Space by Valentina Rozas-Krause, edited by Andrew M. Shanken (May 7, $29.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-5315-0639-1), reassesses the role of women in public art, with a particular focus on the lack of female memorials around the world.
David R. GODINE
In the Company of Art: A Museum Director’s Private Journals by Perry T. Rathbone (May 21, $28.95, ISBN 978-1-56792-803-7) recounts the author’s career, from the 1950s through the ’70s, at the St. Louis Art Museum and Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, including his encounters with such artists as Willem de Kooning and Andrew Wyeth.
Frances Lincoln
The Elements of Art: Ten Ways to Decode the Masterpieces by Susie Hodge (Apr. 30, $19.99, ISBN 978-0-7112-8665-8) shares insights into the techniques used to create 30 classic artworks to teach readers how to dissect art.
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART
The Art of the Literary Poster by Allison Rudnick (Mar. 26, $50, ISBN 978-1-58839-774-4) surveys the history of late 19th–century posters promoting books and magazines and the influence they had on U.S. visual culture and advertising.
The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism, edited by Denise Murrell (Feb. 27, $65, ISBN 978-1-58839-773-7), examines how the movement expanded beyond its New York City origins to help shape 20th-century modernism and foster a global shift in Black creativity and artistic influence.
MIT
Art as Demonstration: A Revolutionary Recasting of Knowledge by Sven Spieker (Feb. 6, $35, ISBN 978-0-262-04871-2) analyzes how the perception of art as a mode of protest, activism, and resistance has shifted with post–WWII and Cold War politics.
Mortevivum: Photography and the Politics of the Visual by Kimberly Juanita Brown (Feb. 6, $18.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-0-262-54764-2) studies images from the first Black republic in early 19th-century Haiti to the 1994 Rwandan genocide to probe the colonial roots of global photography and the ethics of sensationalizing Black suffering.
Wolkenbügel: El Lissitzsky as Architect by Richard Anderson (Apr. 9, $65, ISBN 978-0-262-04878-1) spotlights Russian painter and designer El Lissitzsky (1890–1941) and his proposal for a series of eight “horizontal skyscrapers” to stand at the intersections of Moscow’s Boulevard Ring.
Monacelli
STILL: The Art of Noticing by Mary Jo Hoffman (May 1, $60, ISBN 978-1-58093-633-0) selects 275 of the best images from Hoffman’s project of taking a photograph every day for more than a decade.
Museyon
Kominka: The Beauty and Wisdom of the Japanese Traditional House by Kazuo Hasegawa (Feb. 1, $28.95, ISBN 978-1-940842-70-7). Drawing inspiration from the legacy of premodern Japanese architecture, craftsmanship, and determination, Hasegawa offers a guide to Japan’s 101 most attractive kominka.
Penguin Press
The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing by Adam Moss (Apr. 16, $45, ISBN 978-0-593-29758-2). A former editor of New York magazine interviews artists, writers, and musicians, including Rostam Batmanglij, Sofia Coppola, and Marc Jacobs, to shed light on how their notable works got made.
Phaidon
Tattoo You: A New Generation of Artists (Apr. 3, $59.95, ISBN 978-1-83866-756-6) gathers 700 images featuring the work of 75 tattoo artists to highlight the artistry of tattooing and the innovations being made with this ancient form of self-expression.
Princeton Univ.
Contact: Art and the Pull of Print by Jennifer L. Roberts (May 14, $39.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-0-691-25585-9) highlights the physical aspects of engraving, lithography, and other forms of printmaking to show what it takes to create an often one-of-a-kind artwork, and surveys pieces by David Hammons, Edgar Heap of Birds, Jasper Johns, and other artists.
Reaktion
Symbolism, Dada, Surrealisms: Selected Writing of Mary Ann Caws by Mary Ann Caws (May 13, $40, ISBN 978-1-78914-857-2) gathers the literary critic and art historian’s writings on such artistic movements as symbolism, dadaism, and surrealism, including insights into works by Emily Dickinson, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Marcel Duchamp.
Rizzoli
Housing the Nation: Affordability and Social Equity, edited by Alexander Gorlin and Victoria Newhouse (Mar. 26, $35, ISBN 978-0-8478-7398-2), reframes America’s housing crisis as more than just a failure of the market but an ongoing and ever-growing byproduct of climate change, multigenerational poverty, and racial injustice.
Ride: Antoine Predock: 65 Years of Architecture by Antoine Predock (Apr. 23, $125, ISBN 978-0-8478-9951-7) brings together 3,500 photographs surveying the career of trailblazer Predock, from the La Luz townhouse development in 1960s Albuquerque, N.Mex., to the 2009 construction of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.
Running Press
This Is a Book for People Who Love Tattoos by Verena Hutter, illus. by Eric Hinkley (May 7, $17, ISBN 978-0-7624-8595-6), traces the history of the American traditional style and delves into the meaning and origins of designs from across the world.
Scribner
Cities in the Sky: The Quest to Build the World’s Tallest Skyscrapers by Jason Barr (May 14, $32.50, ISBN 978-1-9821-7421-7) details the economics, controversial designs, and histories of the world’s skyscrapers, including Dubai’s 2,717-
feet-tall Burj Khalifa.
Sternberg
Burn & Gloom! Glow & Moon! Thousand Years of Troubled Genders by Katrina Daschner (Feb. 6, $24, ISBN 978-1-915609-31-1) presents the Vienna-based artist and filmmaker’s work from the 1990s to today.
The Complex Answer: On Art as a Non-binary Intelligence by Chus Martinez (Feb. 13, $25.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-915609-17-5) probes how contemporary art has helped break down the barriers between culture and nature.
Martine Syms: She Mad by Martine Syms (Apr. 2, $35 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-915609-33-5) discusses the five episodes filmed by installation artist Syms between 2015 and 2020 for her TV series She Mad, and how their references to sitcoms, silent films, and other narrative forms comment on representations of Black
identity in mass media.
Tate
A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography, edited by Osei Bonsu (Mar. 26, $45 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-84976-851-1), gathers images from Africa’s leading photographers and corresponding essays touching on such subjects as spirituality, urbanism, and climate change to challenge Western perceptions of the continent.
Thames & Hudson
Claude Cahun by François Leperlier (Feb. 13, $16.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-0-500-29749-0). Born Lucy Schwob, French surrealist Cahun (1894–1954) pushed against the boundaries of gender and identity in her art and writing. The latest entry in the publisher’s Photofile series gathers her striking self-portraits and other photographs.
Collaboration: A Potential History of Photography by Ariella Aïsha Azoulay et al. (Feb. 6, $85, ISBN 978-0-500-54533-1), challenges the notion of photographers as the sole creators of their work by surveying Susan Meiseaes’s photos of her neighbors, Endia Beales’s images of Black women about to enter the workforce, and other collaborative projects.
Project UrbEx by Ikumi Nakamura (Mar. 5, $50, ISBN 978-0-500-02694-6). The video game creator presents her photographs of abandoned and secret locations, from a derelict high school in New Jersey to the Petrova Gora monument in Croatia.
The Art of Ukraine by Alisa Lozhkina (Apr. 16, $24.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-0-500-29778-0). The latest entry in the World of Art series chronicles Ukrainian art from the 19th century to the beginning of the 2022 Russian invasion.
Univ. of Minnesota
Good Pictures Are a Strong Weapon: Laura Gilpin, Queerness, and Navajo Sovereignty by Louise Siddons (July 30, $34.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-5179-1073-0) analyzes 20th-century lesbian photographer Gilpin’s depictions of the Navajo community, the problematic legacy of white photographers depicting Native cultures, and the limits of allyship.
Viking
Get the Picture: A Mind-Bending Journey Among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How to See by Bianca Bosker (Feb. 6, $29, ISBN 978-0-525-56220-7). The author of Cork Dork returns with a report on how obsession drives the art community and what it means to see the world as artists and collectors do.
Yale Univ.
How to Enjoy Architecture: A Guide for Everyone by Charles Holland (Apr. 23, $25, ISBN 978-0-300-26393-0) invites readers to examine buildings through the eyes of an architect and contends that doing so can bring joy.
The Performer: Art, Life, Politics by Richard Sennett (Apr. 23, $30, ISBN 978-0-300-27290-1) dissects artists’ uncanny abilities to perform, not just on the stage or canvas but in life and politics.
A version of this article appeared in the 12/04/2023 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: Art, Architecture & Photography
The week in pictures: Scotland
From paintings to pandas, see what caught the eye of Scottish photographers this week
East Side native embeds social issues into his art
Submitted photo
James Shawn Crum, a graduate of East High School and native of Youngstown, has shown his artwork at Kent State University at Trumbull, Trumbull Art Gallery in Warren and the McDonough Art Museum in Youngstown.
YOUNGSTOWN — James Shawn Crum recalls playing “the artist” whenever he and his sister played house during their childhood.
Little did he know back then that he would find himself at the legendary Cedars Lounge in Youngstown hanging out with painters, photographers sculptors, musicians, poets and many others who live the artist lifestyle. It was the creative atmosphere of Cedars circa the 1990s that groomed Crum, 53, into the expressive artist that he is today.
“I moved out to California where I did sculpture, and then I dated a local artist named Robert Walker and he gave me paint supplies. That moment was what inspired me to paint,” Crum said. “From that point, I traveled to city to city with my paints, canvases and clothes. I lived in Columbus, New Orleans, San Diego and Brooklyn, New York. I considered that the artist lifestyle, and I showed my art in art exhibitions in all those cities. I think the art community here in Youngstown is friendlier, more inviting and inspirational.”
He grew up on Youngstown’s East Side and graduated from East High School. His parents are James and Mary Crum.
His family left Mississippi to work in the steel mills in Youngstown. Crum’s mother came to Youngstown when she was a teenager and his father arrived in Youngstown on his own. Both of his parents ended up working in the steel mills.
“I was one of those kids who remembers when the steel mills in Youngstown closed and how life changed drastically for a lot of local residents back then,” he said. “I was living on the East Side, and it was a great place to live back then, but then it became poor, and there was a lot of violence, especially during the 1990s.”
When it comes to artistic influences and inspirations, Crum has a long list. However, some of his greatest inspirations include Jacob Lawrence, Jean -Michel Basquiat, Romare Beardon and the Ukrainian-born sculptor, Louise Nevelson.
“I look at Louise Nevelson’s work, and it’s breathtaking. It’s like something spiritual is screaming for my attention whenever I look at her work,” he said. “I was drawn to Jacob Lawrence because his style is very raw, and he tells a story in his artwork. When I look at his work, I understand what his life has been like at the time.”
On Sept. 9, Crum’s exhibit, “Black Noise White Gaze, Paintings by James Shawn Crum,” opened at the Coy Cornelius & Judy Rogers Studios in Youngstown. This exhibit was a showcase of Crum’s collection of acrylic on canvas paintings that are centered around the current socio-political climate. The exhibition addressed the issues of social inequality, African-American cultural and activist history, class, sexuality and race. The exhibition closed Sept. 28.
“My partner, John Noga, who is also a local artist, helped curate the show,” he said. “The theme of the exhibition is inspired by the idea that I have been thinking about our society today and about myself being homosexual and black. With this show, I was able to quietly articulate what it is like to be black and homosexual during this time period and the struggles we face. I felt like I needed to tell my story because everyone feels so powerless right now.”
Crum is a self-taught artist and over the years, has experimented with collage and painting. Crum’s main concentration now is acrylic on canvas.
“I would like to do more collage, and I like mixing collage and painting together. I would also like to get more into print-making and incorporate that with my painting with collage,” Crum said. “I did a lot of sculpture when I was in my early 20s while living in California.”
Crum has shown his art at Kent State University at Trumbull, Trumbull Art Gallery in Warren and the McDonough Art Museum in Youngstown. He also has shown his work at various coffee shops and small art spaces in Columbus and in numerous shows in New York City.
“I think with art, it’s important for people to be comfortable enough to share their stories. I felt that when I was younger, there weren’t enough people sharing their art,” he said. “Art back then was seen more as a hobby. I want young people today to see that art is something to take seriously as a career and to make it a part of their lives. I want to encourage young people that art can be a serious vocation.”
To suggest a Saturday profile, contact Features Editor Burton Cole at bcole@tribtoday.com or Metro Editor Marly Reichert at mreichert@tribtoday.com.
Road to Carrizozo with the sun going down and the clouds enraptured!
The 1st of The Mighty Five art shows captures Zion in ways smartphone cameras can’t
Back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, well before smartphones and selfies, artists played a crucial role in introducing Americans to the otherworldly red rock landscape of Zion Canyon.
In a time when visiting in person was a challenge, those early impressions of Zion’s grandeur helped both to popularize it and gain its protection as a national park, said Sears Art Museum director and curator James Peck.
“Once painters got out to Zion and people started to see the colors and the contrast and the amazing slot canyons and all that, it’s hard to overestimate how important that is for what we have today.”
Zion National Park doesn’t need much help with publicity anymore, but a new exhibit at the museum on the campus of Utah Tech University is celebrating the connections between art and this remarkable landscape. Even in the age of iPhones and Instagram, Peck said, nothing can replace an artist’s ability to capture the depth of emotion Zion’s scenery inspires.
David Condos
/
KUER
When someone puts paint to canvas, he said, they aren’t bound to the same conventions that a phone is. Artists have the license to inject emotion and meaning, he said, by choosing to focus on one element, shifting the color palette or presenting a view from an angle that humans can’t physically access.
“Artists in many ways are able to do things with our memories that we can’t do,” Peck said. “So they become the guardians in the vanguard of protecting our memories and changing and challenging our perceptions of it.”
The free exhibit is the first in a series called The Mighty Five that will eventually showcase work from each of Utah’s destination national parks.
In all, the Zion exhibit features around 100 pieces of art. Each one is a bit different — there’s even a series of three divergent paintings of the same scene by the same artist — showing how every visit to the ever-changing landscape can show us something new based on the season, how the rock has eroded or how the light creeps into the canyon.
David Condos
/
KUER
Between walls lined with pastel, oil and watercolor paintings, a set of glass cases holds intricately designed Indigenous pottery found in the Virgin River that carved Zion Canyon. It’s an acknowledgment of the rich history of art among Utah’s native peoples, who were often excluded from pioneer-era depictions of this region.
The exhibit also highlights how Zion’s natural beauty has fueled southwest Utah’s art scene, with dozens of pieces from modern local artists like Mary Jabens of Cedar City.
She visits Zion and other public lands in southwest Utah at least once a week through the fall and winter to paint, often as part of a group of local artists who call themselves The Kolob Society after Zion’s Kolob Canyons area.
Trying to do this intricately hued landscape justice is a challenge, she said. But for her, it never gets old.
“When the light hits the different colors of those red rocks with the hidden pinks and purples and oranges and iridescent blues,” she said, “you can’t help but sit back and just stare at it going, ‘Oh, my. It’s beautiful.’”
Two of Jabens’ paintings found a place in this exhibit, a large vertical piece with a pair of condors soaring over Angels Landing and a wide horizontal piece that focuses on light hitting a bend in the Virgin River.
David Condos
/
KUER
The second piece came from a stroll she took in one of her favorite parts of the park, the Riverside Walk trail that leads to The Narrows. She turned to look downstream, the sun hit the canyon’s green springtime leaves just right, and she was struck by the beauty like she was seeing it for the first time.
That’s a feeling she hopes people who visit the exhibit walk away with.
“It just inspires me. It fills my heart,” Jabens said. “It’s like a promise that things are still good.”
The exhibit opened Dec. 1, 2023, and runs through Jan. 12, 2024, at the Sears Art Museum at Utah Tech University in St. George.
Director Bao Dong on What Makes the Beijing Contemporary Uniquely Situated to Be the Next Top Art Fair
Next May, the esteemed art fair Beijing Dangdai, also known as Beijing Contemporary, will return for its 6th edition in Hall 11 of the city’s National Agricultural Exhibition Center. Reflecting the core mission and ethos of the fair, the 2024 edition of Beijing Dangdai 2024 will host a dynamic and diverse range of international galleries and see the fair collaborate with art and cultural institutions both from across the Chinese city and from around the world.
Founded in 2018 and helmed by Art Director Bao Dong, in six short years Beijing Dangdai has emerged as a leading international art fair and an important event on art world calendars. We reached out to Bao Dong to learn more about what inspired him to establish the fair, and what sets it apart within the contemporary “art ecosystem.”
Courtesy of Beijing Contemporary.
Why did you choose Beijing to launch this art fair?
Beijing served as the capital city for five dynasties in China, since some 850 years ago, laying the foundation for people of different regions, ethnic groups, and cultural backgrounds to gather and interact. It has a unique climate that boasts the most energetic and widest spectrum of art ecosystems in China, and is home to the largest number of artists, galleries, art institutes, and is a hub for both corporate and private collectors.
It also boasts a profound and historic heritage that is constantly intertwining with the dynamic vigor of contemporary art and artists. Established over two decades ago, the 798 Art Zone is now a landmark in the city with the highest density of art galleries, museums, and artist studios with international art and culture institutions like Galleria Continua, Galerie Urs Meile, Whitestone Gallery, and Goethe Institute. International galleries such as Lisson Gallery and Massimodecarlo flocked to the bonded-area in close proximity to the airport. Also, the prestigious art institution UCCA is headquartered in Beijing, along with most numbered museums opened by private individuals, financial institutions, and Chinese auction houses such as Poly Auction and China Guardian Auctions.
The juxtapositions inherent in the city are evidenced in intriguing exhibitions like “Mirroring the Heart of Heaven and Earth: Ideas and Images in the Chinese Study” on view at the Palace Museum, showcasing contemporary and multimedia artworks with classical calligraphies, paintings, and antique collections. The launch of Beijing Dangdai Art Fair in 2018 was a direct response to the growing need for and interest in a Beijing-specific perspective on contemporary art.
Courtesy of Beijing Contemporary.
What makes Beijing Dangdai art fair stand out from other art fairs in China and abroad?
Whilst the art market may be seen as “flattened” and homogenized, Beijing Dangdai presents its “unevenness” in its participating galleries and exhibition design, bringing together the blood and vessels that are scattered around the art landscapes of the capital city and beyond.
Among the 84 Chinese galleries that participated in our 2023 edition, 75 percent of participants have spaces in Beijing, showing the pivotal status of the city within China. Among the 87 participating galleries that have spaces in China, 10 have gallery spaces in emerging cities such as Shenzhen, Chengdu, and Urumqi.
Booth layout is planned counter to the hierarchical arrangement often adopted, as galleries of different backgrounds and seniority are scattered around the fair space to share the main area.
Our “Value” sector features a curation of galleries and the diverse values they embody. Established galleries from different regions and backgrounds will present world-class artworks in this sector. “Future” seeks to discover and foresee future art trends through presenting forward-thinking artworks. Galleries will bring experimental and curated art pieces and projects that explore new presentation methods and artistic concepts.
“Story” is a curatorial sector of the fair, meant to be realized via museum-level exhibitions at various exhibiting spaces in Beijing, probing into the contemporary art scene with in-depth perspective and rigorous academic scope,.
Courtesy of Beijing Contemporary.
Compared to art collectors in other cities, what’s different about Beijing-based collectors?
Beijing has the most collectors per capita in the country, consisting of both experienced and younger individuals with highly personalized paths to their collections. Each collection is formulated by high consumer power, century-long antiques collection history, and in-depth appreciation for content rather than format.
The threads and stories of their collections are closely related to their life experience, knowledge structures, and aesthetic preferences, highlighting their personal tastes and visions.
Some collectors look to history as a reference, and aspire to build a micro art history of their own. Some take delight in the surprises and contrasts of collecting both ancient and contemporary art; some see art collection as their life cause and devote time, energy, and resources to enjoy the most of it.
As such, it is then not uncommon to see collectors in flip-flops at Beijing Dangdai, who come to the fair with their families on public days. They come for the sake of art and want to celebrate it with jubilation rather than see it as a means to socialize or flaunt themselves.
Courtesy of Beijing Contemporary.
What are the most impressive trends in the art ecology that have emerged over the recent editions of the fair?
More and more galleries active in China have begun to represent artists from around the globe. Promising international artists appear in the artist lists from native Chinese art galleries like Antenna Space, Star Gallery, White Space, and Simulacra.
Likewise, Chinese galleries have also begun to open new spaces outside the country. For instance, with spaces in both Beijing and Berlin, gallerist Hua Xiaochan from Hua International said to have faith in the potential of Chinese artists and the universal value of art that transcends borders and cultures. She works closely with emerging artists both in China and Europe to build strong and long-term relationships with active and emerging art collectors.
Beijing Dangdai will continue to gather a diverse line-up of galleries and collaborate with art and cultural institutions across Beijing and beyond to present the audience with a vibrant and dynamic spectrum of the art ecosystem. We cordially invite you to “Tune into the artworld of Beijing.”
Beijing Contemporary VIP Preview will take place May 23–24, with public days May 25–26, in Hall 11 of the National Agricultural Exhibition Center.
Follow Artnet News on Facebook:
Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward.
