Global Coverage ~ Unique Analysis
As Art Stage Singapore is set to open, Lorenzo Rudolph has some stark words for the city-state’s culture industry where art sales are off 25-40%:
“Everybody is asking: Where is Singapore going? We all know Gillman Barracks has problems, we all know galleries are trying to survive and some have left. We all know also that institutions are not in the best position.” […]
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)
Artforum’s Kate Sutton wandered through Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands for the latest edition of Art Stage Singapore:
The fair itself features a heady mix of smaller galleries from Southeast Asia and a smattering of those Westerners who have opened second or third spaces in Hong Kong, Beijing, or Singapore. “I participated the first two years, then skipped last year,” dealer Kashya Hildebrand confessed. “I came back because I figured things could get pretty fun now that Art Basel Hong Kong has given all these Asian galleries the boot. Collectors missing their Asian art fix know they can come here.” All that and more: Berlin/Seoul/Beijing–based Michael Schultz Gallery made headlines offering a flashy $11.5 million Gerhard Richter painting, with another Richter reported as sold for a more palatable €580,000. […]
ArtStage founder and director Lorenzo Rudolf (who helmed Art Basel in the pre-Keller-era of 1991–2000) keeps the fair from feeling too corporate through the use of ingeniously deployed “Platforms,” nation- or region-specific exhibitions selected from the offerings at the fair by some of Asia’s most celebrated curators, including Mori Art Museum’s Mami Kataoka (Japan); Kim Sung Won (Korea); Charles Merewether (Central Asia); and artist Bose Krishnamachari, who’s responsible for creating Kochi, India’s first biennial. The mixture of curatorial statements and price tags seemed to take; Continua sold Qiu Zhijie’s The Politics of Laughing for $80,000, while Sundaram Tagore delighted in the $66,000 sale of Jane Lee’s 50 Faces. (Lee’s show continues at the gallery’s Gillman Barracks outpost.) Shakshi Gupta’s intricately-carved-and-feathered totem also found a home via Platforms.
all the world’s a stage (Artforum)
Excellent sales report on Art Stage Singapore from Nicolas Forrest in Artinfo Australia:
A Definitive Art Stage Singapore 2014 Sales Repor (Blouin Artinfo)
Lorenzo Rudolf, former director of ArtBasel, is gearing up for another edition of his Art Stage Singapore next week. Though many think ArtBasel Hong Kong has gained momentum in Asia, Rudolf is quick to point to the sheer size of the market in Asia:
Smiling at the mention of Art Basel – Rudolf, a former director, is credited with transforming that modest event into a glitzy Miami Beach-style success – he says: “Competition is the best thing for the business. There are only two places where you can make an international art fair in Asia: Hong Kong and Singapore. It’s the best thing that can happen for Asia – the biggest continent in the world and two fairs.
“Count all the fairs in Europe – it’s 10 times more. Asia is a continent that’s growing, increasing, which means they need platforms like that, a successful top fair in Hong Kong and Singapore, as long as the two fairs are not at the same time and do not have the same concept,” the 54-year-old Swiss says, adding he is happy that his old colleagues from Art Basel have ventured to Asia.
“It’s not a question of an increase, but a question of what you want,” says the fair director. “It is typical of every contemporary art fair to try to balance both sides: not just a fair for billionaires, but also quality works, young art that [is] not expensive. The importance is to have the entire balance.”
This year’s event, from January 16 to 19, also aims to strike a balance between the business of selling art, and that of educating collectors.
Art Stage Singapore puts region’s art in global spotlight (SCMP)
