Art Dubai Features A Hong Kong-Based Gallery And Three From Beijing#
Wan Yang, Ice-Cream Drill No. 5, 2009. Acrylic on canvas, 150 x 200 cm (Courtesy of Connoisseur Contemporary)
Art Dubai's fifth edition opens next week and will run from March 16-March 19. Insulated from the recent turmoil in the Middle East mainly due to the UAE's greater wealth and larger proportion of expats, Art Dubai presents itself as "the leading contemporary art fair in the region." Though sales at Art Dubai have rarely exceeded one million dollars, Antonia Carver, the new director of Art Dubai, has attracted galleries from more countries in this year's edition, creating the biggest fair yet with 82 galleries -- roughly evenly split between the Middle East, Europe, and Asia and the U.S. -- taking part. As Carver told the Telegraph this week, the idea of this year's fair is to promote Dubai as a global financial and trading centre, and to expose it as "a site of discovery."
Galleries from a total of 34 countries are represented this year, including several representing Chinese artists:
ARTSIDE GALLERY
ARTSIDE gallery has locations in Beijing and Seoul and will be exhibiting art from Chinese artists Yue Minjun and Zhang Xiaogang.
Galleria Continua
Galleria Continua has exhibited at Art Dubai since 2007, but only this year is it joined by other galleries representing Chinese artists. Though the gallery is also based in San Gamignano and Le Moulin, Galleria Continua does represent Chinese artists such as Kan Xuan, Liu Jianhua, and Sun Yuan & Peng Yu.
Connoisseur Contemporary
The Hong Kong-based Connoisseur Contemporary gallery plans to exhibit work from Chinese artists Li Shuirui and Wan Yang.
This year, the fair will also introduce MARKER, a new platform to allow experimental art spaces featuring emerging artists from Asia and the Middle East. One of the five art spaces showing at MARKER will be "Liu Ding's Store" from Beijing. Liu Ding's Store will feature a two-part space; the first part featuring factory created and artist-signed unfinished landscape paintings that customers can finish themselves, and the second featuring conversations and private dialogues with collectors, critics, curators and dealers.
Liu Ding’s Store, Beijing
Liu Ding is a Beijing-based artist who has participated in various major exhibitions including the Chinese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2009. Liu Ding's Store was launched in 2008 and seeks to use a "shop" model to engage discussion and thought on the creation of value.