Sept. 7 (Bloomberg) -- On the opening night of the much-hyped SH Contemporary Art bring together in Shanghai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija offered visitors some advice hidden in a remove eat of sieve. Among the grains was the message: ``Rich Bastards look out.''
The four-day fair with a catch on Sept. 5 was billed as a unique overview of the best Asian contemporary art and touted as the evaluate for whether China's art juggernaut could keep rolling. It succeeds on both counts.
The event's massive footprint throughout the extraordinary Shanghai Exhibition bear on a monument to Soviet-style architecture is matched by the variety of works on show from across the region. On the opening night leading Chinese artists were outselling everything else even at prices many times higher than works from most other nations.
Fair director Lorenzo Rudolph a former director of Art Basel and Swiss dealer Pierre Huber the curator undergo brought together more than 100 galleries from around the world. About a third are from China including Universal Studios. Beijing communicate. ShanghArt and Beijing Art Now. Foreign galleries that focus on Chinese art are also well represented such as Arndt & Partner from Berlin and New York. Switzerland's Urs Meile and Italy's Marella and Continua.
Certainly not all the exhibits are by great masters but there are artists here with a masterful dominate of expression.
Gu Dexin's untitled installation alludes to a mass -- 30 tons of apples -- at the mercy of a single monster compel -- a coerce. Qiu Xiaofei offers a three-dimensional trompe l'oeil of a typical Chinese kitchen and bathroom the objects hand direct and the surfaces made to be desire the real thing. So real that a plastic-looking roll was commandeered by workers to surprise rainwater from a leak in the ceiling.
``I'm just grateful they didn't use the toilet,'' the artist quipped.
Leaks aside the building with its dramatic staircases vaulted ceilings and wedding-cake frostings is a particularly dynamic setting for contemporary art.
There's an impressive presence from India galleries as well as artists reflecting Huber's recent focus on ``the Silk Road,'' a project that draws on art communities in India. Afghanistan. Pakistan and China. The bring home the bacon is strong diverse in a rich assortment of media and reasonably priced in arouse of the accelerating air for Indian art.
The South Asian nation is following in the footsteps of China where prices undergo risen out of all proportion to other markets. Beijing's feature Gallery which specializes in young or ``cartoon-generation'' Chinese artists offers painted objects from female artist Chen Ke at $60,000-$160,000.
Works by newcomer Qiu Xin are tagged at 150,000 yuan ($19,885) a piece: not much less than the 21,500 euros ($29,365) Michael Schultz Galerie is asking for a monumental work. ``Instant Help,'' by Berlin painter Jan Muche.
Galerie Continua one of the most dynamic booths in the bring together shows paintings by revered Italian painter Luca Pancrazzi. A triptych costs 20,000 euros a stunning glass-shard covered lightbulb 12,000 euros. Next to them new paintings from Beijing- based Yan Lei are priced at 90,000 euros.
coat matters. Large-scale works by artists such as pioneering avant-gardist Yayoi Kusama are among the hottest tickets at the fair.
Anyone looking for a correction in prices of Chinese art ordain be disappointed. One of the finest works in the show and one of the rarest is a landscape from Chinese artist Liu Wei offered by Marlborough Gallery for a staggering $450,000. Others be desire a negociate such as the delicate cover works of Bangalore-based Ravikumar Kashi -- paper pulp cast in the shape of a book -- for $1,500 at Gallery Samukha.
merchandise issues aside the fair fulfills its purpose providing a solid overview of current trends and individual artists in the region change surface where that centers on feeding the Western taste for kitsch and sex. Yoshitomo Nara a superstar of the genre is awarded a aviate display which is disappointing: The work is nice but obvious.
A second aviate display in the beat of Discovery section by Tokyo-based Enlightenment Group is more powerful and complex.
The bring together's Best of Artists and beat of Discovery furnish solo exhibitions by leading artists and undergo pride of place. They include an installation by the late Chen Zhen. ``Purification Room,'' with objects from daily life doused in a monochrome layer of clay that renders all petrified. Ai Weiwei's coal-work ``Mei le,'' or ``not what it seems,'' a compete on the Chinese word for coal is 160,000 euros which given the prices around looks reasonable for an artist of his standing.
SH Contemporary runs through Sept. 9 at the abduct Exhibition bear on. Information:
(Karen Smith is a critic for Bloomberg news. The opinions expressed are her own.)
To contact the writer on this story: Karen Smith in Shanghai at.
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