Kishore Singh decode’s the meaning of Art Stage Singapore’s “We Are Asia” slogan and one of the fair’s directors, Gil Schneider’s take on Art Stage Singapore as a ‘neighborhood” fair:
[It] isn’t preaching a style of Asian art, instead it is treating it like a jigsaw puzzle and assembling the pieces to form a mosaic, the pixillations aimed at presenting a cohesive view. ” Asia stretches all the way from Turkey to New Zealand,” he argues, “so someone sitting in Mumbai has no idea about art in Korea, or Indonesia.” […]
This is what makes Art Stage different from other fairs. Its focus is single-mindedly Asian. Are there any defining features for the region as a whole? If you’ve been to Korea, or Hong Kong and Singapore, you begin to recognise artists’ works and even perhaps an appetite for the “styles”, the most obvious example of which is the wide-eyed comic characters of Japanese and some Korean art that also finds its presence in pornography and is faintly disturbing. But an overarching theme? That would be as naive as looking for a common chord for Asian food (or even Indian cuisine). A smorgasbord is more likely – and the better for it.
[…] Though smaller than Art Basel Hong Kong (in May), it is tapping into the financial community of the island city as well as its neighbourhood, countries that park their money and own apartments in prosperous Singapore. “It does not compete with Hong Kong,” Schneider is at pains to point out, “it complements it.”
Asia rising (Business Standard)
