Source: https://news.artnet.com/market/shanghai-art-fairs-art021-west-bund-1391851
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 23:11:47+00:00

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The VIP entrance at West Bund Art + Design Fair.
Art021, now in its sixth year, opened to VIPs at the Shanghai exhibition center on November 8, with roughly 103 exhibitors. Despite the looming warnings of an economic slowdown from China’s authorities, the crowds thronging the halls here seemed upbeat. Dealers reported brisk sales within hours. By the end of day, several said they were nearly or completely sold out.
Meanwhile, another fair held at West Bund, near the water and farther from the city center, was already on. The interior of the West Bund Art Fair, with its concrete floors and white walls, has a setup and aesthetic that would be familiar to visitors to the likes of the Armory Show or Frieze.
Visitors at Kerlin Gallery’s booth featuring work by Liam Gillick and Phillip Allen. Courtesy of West Bund Art + Design Fair.
The fairs feel very different. And yet numerous galleries, including powerhouse names like Gagosian, David Zwirner, Hauser & Wirth, and Emmanuel Perrotin, chose to exhibit at both.
Installation view of Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac at WestBund 2018. Photo courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac: London, Paris, Salzburg.
At Art021, sales at Ropac’s solo Alex Katz booth included the oil on linen Bathing Cap (2010) for $550,000.
But the gallery was also showing at West Bund, where it did brisk business as well: Ropac reported selling works there including Georg Baselitz‘s 2018 painting Sind wir Schon da? for $906,000. It also placed Adrian Ghenie‘s Favela (2018) at a Korean Museum for $1.2 million, and found a home for Elizabeth Peyton‘s Two Greek Girls + Peonies (Berlin) (2011-12), which went for $550,000 to an Austrian collector.
Takashi Murakami visiting booths at Art021 in Shanghai. Photo courtesy of Art021 via Instagram.
Chau says doubters originally warned that the fair’s timing in November would never work, due to the dominance of London and New York events including Frieze in October and November auctions. However, West Bund, which was originally held in September, soon switched to November, a move he suggests was done to follow Art021.
Art021 also invited Cesar Garcia, founder of the Los Angeles-based nonprofit the Mistake Room, to curate a special section called “Detour” that more than ticked the “cutting-edge” galleries box.
Brian Jungen’s Mother Tongue at Catriona Jeffries’ booth. Image courtesy of Catriona Jeffries.
Included in this section were Los Angeles-based Ghebaly Gallery, with works by Sayre Gomez and Shulamit Nazarian, and Vancouver’s Catriona Jeffries, showing works by Brian Jungen.
Also part of the Garcia-curated “Detour,” a “black box” video room that shows a loop of videos. One of these is by Oscar Murillo, whose Ramon follows a lottery ticket seller through the streets of the artist’s hometown in Colombia, as he attempts to unload tickets for sale.
Mark Ryden, Salvator Mundi (2018) at Paul Kasmin’s booth at Art021 in Shanghai. Photo by Eileen Kinsella.
Meanwhile, in the main section of the fair, dealer Paul Kasmin was among the first-time exhibitors, with a booth that proved wildly popular. The gallery riffed on Christie’s viral marketing campaign for Leonardo da Vinci‘s Salvator Mundi last fall, with a playful blue Mark Ryden portrait—sphere in hand and all—flanked by security guards in dark suits, at the front of the booth. By the end of the preview day, it had sold for about $350,000.
Other sales in the booth included James Nares‘s Spark (2018) for $80,000, and Alex Katz’s OONA (2017), for $25,000.
Hauser & Wirth reported sales including Zhang Enli’s The Garden (2017), for $385,000 to a museum in China, as well as four works by Matthew Day Jackson, the highest of which was the artist’s mixed media Babel (2013), for $325,000 to a private collection in China. Four works by Rashid Johnson found buyers, the highest of which was Untitled Anxious Audience (2018), for $245,000 to a private collection in Indonesia. The gallery also sold two works by Takesada Matsutani, both priced at $150,000, including Germination 2014 (2014) and Cercle 08-9-10 (2008). Both went to private collections in Taiwan.
David Zwirner’s sales at Art021 included Oscar Murillo’s mixed media on canvas bank of (2017-18) for $300,000; Francis Alÿs’s diptych Untitled (2011-12), for $250,000; Carol Bove’s stainless steel and urethane paint S.O.S. (2018), for $220,000; two untitled works by Harold Ancart for $150,000 each; Wolfgang Tillmans‘s Shenzhen still life (2018) for $95,000; two paintings by Lucas Arruda for $55,000 each; and Raymond Pettibon‘s No Title (Teenage Love…) (1991), for $20,000.
Installation view of Lehmann Maupin’s booth art West Bund Art + Design. Courtesy of Lehmann Maupin.
Meanwhile at West Bund, first time exhibitor Lehmann Maupin reported brisk sales. Gallery co-founder Rachel Lehmann was on hand to deliver a talk sharing highlights of her private collection and spoke about how assembling it has shaped her vision as a gallerist.
The gallery’s sales included McArthur Binion’s Ink: Work (Vermillion) (2018), for around $100,000; Angel Otero’s Someday Sunday (2018), for around $60,000; Hernan Bas‘s Hide and Seek (Fuming) (2018), for about $150,000; and Suh Se Ok’s Two People (2000), for an undisclosed price.
Installation view of White Cube Gallery at West Bund Art Fair. Courtesy of White Cube.
London’s White Cube gallery, exhibiting at West Bund for the fifth time, reported sales of work by George Baselitz, Tracey Emin, Antony Gormley, Mona Hatoum, and Chinese artists Liu Wei and Zhou Li.
Asked if broader economic volatility or concerns about the impact of tariffs on China are weighing on the mind of the art world, Jonas Stampe, senior curator and senior researcher at the Red Brick Art Museum in Beijing, was sanguine.

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