This year's West Bund Art and Design Expo expanded to the third exhibition hall, West Bund Dome

Courtesy of West Bund Art and Design Fair

Shanghai’s two flagship fairs, Art021 and West Bund Art & Design Fair (both November 11-14) ended on Sunday, and the results were mixed with mixed sales.

Following the rejoicing return after the closure of Shanghai Art Week in 2020, this year's art season seems to be scattered and relatively dull. People are in a good mood, but are tired of the ongoing and newly tightened Covid restrictions, and nervous about the strengthening of scrutiny and the Beijing plenary meeting to further consolidate the power of Chinese President Xi Jinping. Nonetheless, the purchasing power of an expanding base of domestic collectors who cannot travel abroad has driven overall satisfactory sales.

“The atmosphere is very pleasant, new and young collectors show very serious interest and purchase. Although it is difficult to judge the age while wearing a mask, they are buying blue chip artworks,” said Dawn Zhu, the director of Thaddaeus Ropac Asia. The new collectors include new institutions opened in second-tier cities such as Qingdao, Chengdu and Shenzhen. Zhu said that works priced between US$150,000 and US$200,000 are selling well. "Clients may not know these artists well, but after seeing them in other galleries before... and knowing about them, they can make a decision in the first few hours." However, more than one million dollars. The works are either pre-sold or need further discussion. Ropac sold Jason Martin's Untitled (Ultramarine Blue, 2020) for 65,000 pounds, Yan Peiming's Autoportrait, le déni (2020), and Mandy El-Sayegh's works for 45,000 to 55,000 US dollars for 80,000 euros "We can sell many people several times." Collectors are interested in their blue-chip core, but they are also curious about the rising stars, especially "want to have connections with China or influence like Rausenberg Chinese artists like Ge".

Lehman Morpin's booth in the West Bund

Tiffany Xu, director of Lehmann Maupin China, also observed a surge in young collectors. "My most intuitive feeling is that new collectors have a broader vision and diversified access to information. They also show a greater interest in young [and more diverse] artists." She added, although "this year is still There are some deals under discussion," but sales "performed very well this year," albeit slower than last year. Xu said that other galleries are also conducting similar post-show negotiations. In addition to exhibiting the works of El-Sayegh and Angel Otero in the current and upcoming Beijing Museum, Lehmann Maupin also sold a painting from McArthur Binion's "Altar" series to a private Chinese collection, Otero's, for $170,000. Silence (2020) was sold to a private Chinese collection for $50,000. The Perdu series of three works by Li Boer sold for nearly $400,000, as well as works by Do Ho Suh and Chantal Joffe, Marilyn Minter and Billy Childish.

The art schedule in Shanghai this year has been expanded. The new Design Miami/Podium Shanghai (November 5-14) and Shanghai Photography Exhibition (November 3-6) are rescheduled from the usual September dates, as well as Longlati, M and CC Foundation. In late October, the Long Museum, Yuz Art Museum, Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art and other large art museums held grand opening ceremonies, and the Ming and Contemporary Art Museum (MCAM) launched the impressive fifth anniversary celebration of Shanghai performance art. Prada Rongzhai held an exhibition Djurberg and Hans Berg for Natalie. This year, dealers and collectors parted ways between two large exhibitions with the same date: in previous years, they overlapped but had one or two different days. Both restored their full capacity before the pandemic, and the 021 and 134 galleries in the West Bund expanded to the third hall West Bund dome, which mainly contained non-profit organizations, design booths and brand promotion.

According to the spokesperson of the fair, West Bund Art and Design has attracted more than 120 galleries, designer brands and art institutions from 18 countries this year. The addition of the third exhibition hall makes the 8th West Bund Exhibition the largest exhibition hall in history, covering an area of ​​more than 30,000 square meters. The spokesperson said that overseas galleries accounted for 60%, and "the overlap rate with [Art] Basel's first-tier galleries reached 50%." The new Covid outbreak in other parts of the country means that the city government requires Photofairs, West Bund and 021 to require all tourists to take a negative Covid test within 48 hours of wearing a mask and showing a green QR code. This has reduced public visitors. But no, say dealers, many collectors.

Beyond the Veil (2021) Vaughn Span

© Vaughan Spann. Photo: Thomas Muller. Courtesy of the artist and Almine Rech

The West Bund spokesperson said that as Chinese collectors get younger and younger, the artists they are interested in are getting younger and younger. The solo exhibitions brought by more than ten galleries to the West Bank also confirm this trend: Lévy Gorvy's "post-1975" artist Tu Hongtao, "post-80s" Mexican artist Gabriel Rico (Perrotin), and Japanese "post-80s" artist Miwa Komatsu ( Whitestone Gallery) and "post-80s" American artist Sayre Gomez (Xavier Hufkens), "post-80s" Japanese female artist Ed Shiori (A2Z Gallery), and Almine Rech brought "post-90s" artist Vaughn Spann.

The performance of black figurative art in the exposition is particularly prominent, which is a new turning point in a market that is usually most interested in white and Chinese artists. Black artists are also evident in institutional exhibitions: Span, Amoako Boafo and Derek Adams participated in the Lonrati Foundation’s first exhibition of black portraits, and the M Art Foundation also launched a new one on the vacant venue of the original gallery. Shanghai Space and held a solo exhibition by Ghanaian artist Emmanuel Taku. "Black artists, or more accurately, black history and racial issues have been social topics of great concern in recent years," Xu said, adding that this has been reflected in the art market.

Zola Shao, sales and marketing director of de Sarthe Gallery, who participated in the 021 exhibition, said that young collectors are also more enthusiastic about digital space. As a post-Internet, gaming and urban landscape. Shao said that this has brought good sales to "our three post-network artists Lin Jingjing, Zhong Wei and Mai 2", with works ranging from RMB 50,000 to RMB 250,000.

This year's art fair has expanded art censorship far beyond the usual political and sexual taboos. The works that have passed customs inspection and successfully imported are restricted at the cultural bureau level, usually without any explanation. It seems that foreign artists are subject to stricter scrutiny than Chinese artists, and Chinese artists are allowed to show a degree of slight nudity, leading to the prohibition of foreign works. Military topics appear to have been added to the ban list, and any content containing text must be thoroughly explained to the examiner. Distributors expressed that they were willing to abide by the rules, but were confused by the boundaries. Some people have observed that the CCP's plenary meeting held concurrently with the Beijing Expo had a depressing effect on sales, because businessmen in the more globalized region of East China feared that as Xi Jinping consolidates his rule until at least 2027, China’s growing conservatism will only deterioration. As the border is closed indefinitely under the zero-coronavirus method, people worry that China's two decades of opening to global participation may be reversed.

Nonetheless, compared with the pandemic and border closures, political changes are unlikely to restrain China's art giants. "The enthusiasm for art collecting and owning art will not go away," Zhu said. "Chinese demand is also driving new artists around the world. There is a lot of economic firepower here."