798 District Blog

HONG KONG.- Sotheby’s Hong Kong 20th Century Chinese Art Autumn Sale will be held on 4 October, offering a meticulous selection of more than 120 lots estimated at HK$130 million. Apart from a number of outstanding works passed down by celebrated Chinese painters active in French art circles from the early 20th Century, the auction will also feature a collection of exceptionally rare paintings scheduled to debut in the art market for the first time.

Taking place from 2 to 7 October alongside the 20th Century Chinese Art pre-sale exhibition is Treasures of the Century, an educational non–selling exhibition that provides academic insight on 20th Century Chinese art. Over 20 seminal works by masters and pioneers from Xu Beihong to Chen Yifei will be on view. Please refer to a separate press release for details.

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NEW YORK, NY.- On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century, on view at MoMA from November 21, 2010, through February 7, 2011, will explore the radical transformation of the medium of drawing throughout the last century, a period when numerous artists critically examined the traditional concepts of drawing and expanded the medium’s definition in relation to gesture and form. The exhibition will bring together approximately 300 works that connect drawing to selections of painting, sculpture, photography, film, and dance (represented by films and documentation). Making the case for a discursive history of mark making, On Line maps an alternative project of drawing, with works by a wide range of artists, both familiar and relatively unknown, from different eras of the past century and from many nations. The exhibition is organized by Connie Butler, The Robert Lehman Foundation Chief Curator of Drawings, The Museum of Modern Art, and guest curator Catherine de Zegher, former director, The Drawing Center, New York.

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GWANGJU.- The Gwangju Biennale Foundation and Artistic Director Massimiliano Gioni opened 10,000 Lives, the 8th installment of the The Gwangju Biennale. This edition marks the 30th anniversary of the movement that brought democracy to Korea for which the Biennale was founded.

The Noon Award was founded by the Gwangju Biennale Foundation to recognize an established artist and an emerging artist from that year’s edition of the Biennale whose work particularly embodies its spirit and theme. For this first award a jury composed of the internationally-renowned curators Bice Curiger, Okwui Enwezor, Sungwon Kim, Akira Tatehata, and Vicente Todoli recognized the legendary 83 year old Gustav Metzger as recipient of the established artist prize, and acknowledged young South Korean Haegue Yang in the emerging artist category.

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NEW YORK, NY.- On 16 September 2010 Sotheby’s will offer South Asian Art as one of the Asia week series of auctions. The sale presents 112 works dating from 18th century miniatures to paintings and sculpture from some of the leading names in Indian modern and contemporary art. Among the highlights is Cinq Sens (Five Senses), by MF Husain which was previously in the collection of Roberto Rossellini; it is the leading painting in an exceptional group of 16 works by the artist. The sale also includes a strong group of works by artists from Pakistan such as Sadequain, important paintings by the leading Modern Indian painters such as FN Souza, SH Raza, Akbar Padamsee, and Tyeb Mehta and a number of works by contemporary artists. Overall the auction is expected to fetch $6/8.8 million.

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BEIJING.- From September 8, 2010 to October 28, the National Art Museum of China is to launch a large-sized exhibition named “Road of Futurism”, to exhibit the quintessence of the Italian futurism with 250 pieces of excellent works. This is the first global art movement at the beginning of 20th century, and its idea has influenced all art creation fields profoundly and lastingly, such as visual arts, literature, film, music, theater, fashion, cooking, practical art, advertising design, and photography.

The special exhibition, jointly organized by the National Art Museum of China, City of Alexandria, and the Beijing Cultural Office of Italy, is to exhibit painting masterpieces, and other works like declaration, posters, books, photography, design and furniture of futurism representatives, such as Balla Giacomo and Carrà Carlo, on all sides at the National Art Museum of China for the first time.

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NEW YORK.- Christie’s will collaborate with the Center of International Cultural Exchange (CICE), a direct subsidiary of the Ministry of Culture of the People’s Republic of China, to present Trans-Realism, a comprehensive exhibition featuring works from prominent Chinese contemporary artists. The collection will be on view at Christie’s Rockefeller Center from September 9th through September 26th, 2010. Spear-heading this exhibition are the Artistic Directors LU Jun, Director of CICE, and FAN Di-an, Director of the National Art Museum of China. It was curated by PAN Qing, a curator at the National Museum of China, in association with coordinators Michelle Loh and Jay Lu. 29 works of painting and photography by 17 Chinese artists will be included in the exhibition. Trans-Realism is part of Christie’s on-going support for initiatives that promote inter-cultural exchange and exemplifies Christie’s commitment to help bring Chinese art to a global audience.

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Jorge Nieto will be part of the FIART 2010 exhibition in Santo Domingo, Puerto Rico from the 31th of August until the 5th of September.

More information can be found at the FIART website.

An Exhibition and a Conference

The art market is engaged in the delicate non-science of attaching prices to works of art. It is a process of making something as intangible as art into something as clearly defined as a numerical value. Everyone in the art world is somehow involved in this process, from critics to museums, galleries, collectors and auction houses. A massive network of knowledge and experience goes into creating a delicate balance between the artistic value and commercial value of contemporary art, but the peaks and troughs of the market every now and again throws everything into doubt. The contemporary art market is now larger than it has ever been in history, and the recent crisis is forcing new art markets to face this question for the first time. The advent of modernism and the ideas that drove the artistic evolution from traditional to modern to contemporary has been a constant challenge to the idea of what artistic value actually is. The so-called art establishment that traditionally pronounced on value has been changing and expanding to the extent that it’s now almost impossible to define. In the last two decades with the development of globalization, cultures all over the world with different artistic traditions have been brought into the contemporary dialogue, bringing new and more complex perspectives on the debate about value, which has rarely been questioned within a commercial context.

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Galerie Paris-Beijing in 798 Art District is currently hosting an exhibition of works by celebrated Dutch photographer Erwin Olaf.

The large selection includes his photography series “Rain,” “Hope,” “Grief,” Hotel” and “Laboral Escena, Spain,” and demonstrates people’s emotional world, mostly focusing on the feeling of loneliness.

Well known for his usage of studio lighting, Olaf created the pictures with bright colors and vivid details. All the models look cold and distant, and even when multiple people are in one photo, there is little eye contact between them.

Olaf, who was born in 1959, has lived and worked in Amsterdam since the early 1980s. A pioneer in staged photography, Olaf appeared on the international art scene in 1988 when his series “Chessmen” was awarded first place in the Young European Photographer competition.

The exhibition will run until Sept. 24.

World famous sculptor Ju Ming from Taiwan is holding a large-scale solo exhibition at the National Art Museum of China, showing a selection of his Living World Series sculptures that he has created over the past 30 years.

A total of 150 sculptures are on display in four exhibition halls at the museum, revealing the artist’s personal interpretations of the kaleidoscopic human world. The exhibition also provides an insight in part, to the great contemporary sculptor’s lifelong artistic achievements.

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