Art Attack: See it, watch it, buy it. Gossip about it?
If last week's openings didn't keep you busy enough, there are more cultural happenings coming up. As is often the case, exhibits or film screenings are going on in all sorts of venues, and then you've got art fairs (both on- and offline), and of course the occasional unfounded rumor. Where do we begin?
Things to do with your eyes:
Zhao Dayong is showing two of his films at the UCCA this weekend. Ghost Town (Jan 21) - a darling at the New York Film Festival in 2008 - explores a village haunted by empty religious, political, and social ideologies, while Street Life (Jan 23) follows rural migrants eking out an existence along Shanghai's Nanjing Lu.
If you catch Zhao's flick on Sunday and are hungry for more lens action, Yugong Yishan is hosting the opening party for Wang Zi's solo photo exhibit, "The Parabola."
On January 27, you can head up the road (airport frontage, that is) to PKM Gallery for "Painters," an exhibit so self-explanatory, I can almost stop there. (Ok, I'll at least tell you these are paintings by a mix of established and rising artists hailing from Korea.)
Finally, on January 29, Galerie Urs Meile opens two new exhibits: Andreas Golder's "I Wanna Be Adored" and Xia Xing's "2007/2008/2009/2010." Golder paints surreal abstracts of adolescence, while Xia's quasi-photorealistic approach to painting the news creates a set of unique visual archives.
Things to do with your wallet:
Let's face it, we can't all afford to adorn our walls with hot contemporary art (and no, those posters at Yashow don't count), but it can't hurt to look, can it? This Saturday, the fourth annual New Year Fine Art Print Festival goes blatantly commercial, moving from its previous 798 location to Shin Kong Place. Featuring prints on all sorts of mediums as well as printmaking workshops, the festival lets you get a little more hands on with art.
Also, the Wall Street Journal and the Economist have been buzzing a bit about the first ever VIP Art Fair, which will run from January 22-30 and gives collectors a chance to view art from top galleries all around the world, from anywhere in the world. (If you thought it was hard to shop for shoes on Taobao, picture forking over millions of dollars for a giant sculpture you've never seen in person.)
Still, some say it might actually work to attract a new niche of art lovers. So far, three Beijing galleries are participating (Pekin Fine Arts, PKM, and Faurschou), and if this takes off, it'll be interesting to watch if and how the Beijing presence grows. In some ways, this is an answer to the lean global economy, leveling the field for art galleries who want more exposure without having to fly their collections everywhere.
Things to do with sketchy sources:
Speaking of lean economies ... this past week, one of our editors came across a tweet claiming the UCCA was up for sale. Representatives of the museum denied the rumor (and in fact were quite bewildered by it), so don't fret. What I want to know is, why are alarmist statements like this bandied about with such abandon? Seems like everyone wants a cookie for predicting the next pop in the "Chinese art bubble." Please, tell us something useful. Like where to actually get a good cookie around here.
