Today, the young Taiwanese art fair, Taipei Dangdai, announced a new online initiative developed with digital arts platform, Ocula as an extension of the fair’s January 2020 edition. The new online segment, Taipei Connections, will host a number of established exhibitors who participated early this year, exhibiting a range of works on offer from the selection of vendors—it will coincide with a series of virtual features showcasing the works available for sale, as well as serving as a liaison for live studio visits and other  programming content.  A VIP preview for the fair’s top clients slated for April 30-May 1 will proceed the digital segment’s public opening on May 2-5.

Robin Peckham, Co-Director of the Taipei fair says the new virtual platform “aims to help galleries continue to connect and re-connect with the Taiwanese collector base beyond the week of the fair.” Noting the limitations on opportunities for connecting on deals, Co-Director, Magnus Renfrew, emphasized the need for the virtual space as an extension of the January edition, saying “conversations that start at a fair frequently conclude throughout the year and sometimes in other places. As there are fewer opportunities within the current context for these follow up encounters to happen in person, we want to provide a focal point that can allow conversations to continue virtually.”

Keeping with the momentum developed in the highly successful second edition of Taipei Dangdai held in January 2020 with a roster of 97 vendors attracting a total of 40,000 visitors, Renfrew and Peckham—in line with the rest of the global art community— are launching the online series to sustain engagement. The online segment is meant to extend the transactional potential cultivated in the recent 2020 edition. And despite the uncertainty of the global fair calendar hanging in balances, the third edition of the Taipei Dangdai art is still slated to take place at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center in January 2021.

Regional vendor, Bo Young Song, Managing Director of KUKJE GALLERY said of this year’s fair “our clients, most of them based in Taiwan or surrounding Asian countries, showed much interest in both artists’ contemporary interpretations of local tradition and history, which made it clear that Taiwanese audiences are becoming increasingly more receptive to diverse strains of contemporary art very quickly.”

Bolstered by a young sector of burgeoning internationally based dealers, and an active regional collecting scene, backed by a growing segment of wealth, the Taiwanese capital has established itself as a major player of the Asian art market. Among its strong sector of vendors bringing attention to locale talent, the fair has also gained renowned for its blue-chip and institutional participation – among which include David Zwirner, Hauser & With, Pace, as well as major national cultural names Tainan Art Museum, Taipei Fine Arts Museum and the city’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA).