Art Shenzhen 2018 will kick off at Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center on Friday and run through Sept. 17, with 68 galleries from 27 cities in 11 countries exhibiting artworks in Hall 6. An important art event featuring a diverse presentation in the new era of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, new sections such as Public Art, Art Derivative Space and Greater Bay Area Art Ecosystem, will be organized in addition to the Main Gallery Sectors. Other activities like forums on art collection will also be held at the event. It will present an emerging art market centered on Shenzhen and has set up a contemporary art exchange platform that connects Shenzhen with the world. For the main exhibition area, Art Shenzhen 2018 has attracted 68 galleries from around the world to present about 3,000 modern and contemporary works of the 20th and 21st centuries, including paintings, sculptures, installations, photographic integrated materials, and digital art. These works will demonstrate a rich art landscape. In the Main Gallery Sectors, 22 have participated in Art Basel in Hong Kong and Art Basel in Switzerland; 24 are first timers, including Ink Studio, Beijing Commune, Capsule Shanghai and DonGallery, and the rest include “old faces,” such as Galleria Continua, Boers-Li Gallery, Tang Contemporary Art, White Space and Hive Center for Contemporary Art. Seven overseas galleries, such as MDC, Whitestone Gallery and Pearl Lam Gallery, at the Main Gallery Sectors, will add international flavors to this event. Meanwhile, the event will see the return of three galleries, such as ShanghART Gallery, joining 10 local Shenzhen galleries. Visitors to the event will see artworks by celebrated artists, such as Xu Bing, Yu Youhan, Ding Yi, Zhang Enli, Zhou Chunya, Jia Aili, Jannis Kounellis, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Carsten Hoeller, Antony Gormley, Yayoi Kusama, and Yoshitomo Nara. The Greater Bay Area Art Ecosystem sector will showcase contemporary Chinese art, and the art ecosystem of the Pearl River Delta by OCAT, Fy Foundation and 5idea (a nonprofit art institution) will tap into avant-garde art reflecting the zeitgeist. The Public Art Sectors are the highlights of Art Shenzhen 2018. Visitors will see Prototype 0, a large installation with a strong industrial and tech feel, which is a result of cooperation between Hitachi and He An, one of the Chinese installation artists drawing the most international attention. Brand-new sculptures will be on display, including Bubblecoat Elephant II 1/7 and Kraken 1/7 by Florentijn Hofman, a Dutch artist known for his Rubber Duck and for coming up with aesthetics out of pure forms and materials while exploring scaled visual perception. Large Cat of Fortune, a sculpture by artist Yang Qiong, and Resemblance, an alloy installation by Tang Huawei, will be exhibited in these sectors. The launch of these sectors will promote the diversification of the art market while meeting various collection and appreciation requirements. Six lectures and seminars will be held Saturday and Sunday, including “Art Is the Only Purpose of Life” by Chen Tong, famous artist and founder of Libreria Borges; “Meaning of Public Art to Cities,” a dialogue between artist Ding Yi and Dan Tobin, founder of UAP; “Daily Life, Art, and Status,” a sharing session involving Liang Qian, Yan Shanchun, Zhou Li and Xue Feng, all of whom are Shenzhen artists. Hu Bin, deputy curator of the Art Museum of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts and exhibition planner, will make an elaboration on “An Ongoing Observation of Youth Art Ecosystem in Pearl River Delta.” |