My plan to write short blog posts throughout the duration of the fair obviously did not pan out. How does anyone have the time and energy to do anything after an event like this? I was passed out in bed by 11 most nights, with barely enough energy to answer emails. So this post might be long one. 
DAY ONE: Vernissage & After Party 
    I arrived in Hong Kong under bad weather conditions, after having been stuck on the tarmac in Pudong for over three hours and missing the private view of the fair completely. I didn't get to the fair until 5:30 so I just did a quick walk up and down the aisles, not stopping into the booths themselves. Almost immediately, I ran into Zain Masud, of Art Dubai, and Robin Peckham, who would be a feature in my IHT article that would come out the next day. We had a quick coffee before Zain and I spent a little time walking the fair and catching up. We parted ways at Leo Xu's booth, who was giddy after a successful run at Frieze in New York and a write up by Roberta Smith in the New York Times. At some point, I heard someone yell my name and turned around to see New York-based art critic Barbara Pollack with her husband. They are really lovely people and it's always nice to catch up with Barbara; hopefully, I'll see more of her when I'm in NYC for the summer. Later, I caught up with Rebecca Catching, who was meeting with local artist Phoebe Man whom she's shown at OV Gallery. I chatted with them and another artist Bovey Lee for a bit until Rebecca and I left to join the Randian team at a Malaysian joint in the neighborhood.
     We then headed to the K11 after party in the Grand Hyatt, which turned out to be a disaster, at least when we got there. They had moved it from the pool to the lobby mezzanine on account of the weather so people were standing shoulder to shoulder in a hot (this was Hong Kong. Where was the AC??), too small space. Adrien Cheng, K11's founder, was walking through the party surrounded by HK ladies dressed to the nines in ball gowns and dripping with jewels. Wherever I tried to walk, they seemed to be there in all their satin glory blocking my way. I ran into Aimee Lin of ArtReview, who was headed to the Artsy party at the Asia Society, and artist Zhang Enli with his wife. I told him he should just skip the party but he never misses an opportunity to mingle (odd, since he is so soft spoken and unassuming). 
    I had enough so I just left without saying goodbye to anyone. Which left me with the problem of how to get back to my hotel. The taxi line outside the Grand Hyatt snaked on forever so I tried my luck at the line outside the convention center. The line was indeed shorter but I quickly realized there were no taxis. I wish the organizers had planned for this kind of situation and provided shuttles to various hotels around the city, not just the Mandarin Oriental (the partner hotel of the fair). 

DAY TWO: The Fair
    I had blocked out the entire next day for the fair so I could see booths in detail and meet some new people. The slideshow above gives some highlights (and one or two lowlights) from the show. I'm glad to finally be able to show you what MadeIn was working on in their studio. It's a latex & leather bondage cathedral, accessorized with whips, chains, and various other S&M paraphernalia. Here what it looked like in the studio when I visited a couple of months ago:

    After having an unplanned coffee break with Chris and Daniel of Randian, I ran into my friend Bettina Kames immediately upon entering the fair at the ShanghArt booth. She was going to inquire about Birdhead, whom she collected a few years back on a trip to Shanghai. I had a nice chat with the people at Sikkema Jenkins & Co., who were showing silhouette installations from Kara Walker. I love her work but I know an Asian audience would not get the historical context in her work. But the gallery said they were getting positive responses nonetheless, especially after explaining the artist's exploration of gender oppression. 
    My cousin joined me later in the day to get her fill of art. She generally does not understand the appeal of most contemporary art but I was glad to see she fully appreciated and got a kick out of MadeIn's cathedral piece. We talked about the new Ai Weiwei music video that debuted the day before; she loved it but could not understand why he had to sing it himself. I say it's just more punk rock that way. We made a little detour to the VIP, where I ran into Bettina again. She introduced me to Daniel Lechner of Cheim & Read; his gallery didn't have a booth this year (one of several who opted out this year) so he was finally able to enjoy Hong Kong like a real tourist.
     I always enjoy my time with my cousin. She is one of the most cheerful cynics I know. Our conversations always lead to talk of corruption in China and she has provided me with some enlightening insights in the past about auctions, Chinese officials and the Hong Kong collector. She is a collector herself (of jades and small bronzes) and laments her early years as an uninformed novice who was tricked into buying fakes. She went on to say that the normal Hong Kong buyer doesn't care (Hong Kong was the center of the antiques market many years before it became a contemporary art hub) about what they're buying, which led her to that gem of a quote that is now the title of this post: "They don't actually know anything. They just have money." Which, let's be honest, can be applied to most collectors, be they contemporary art or antique collectors.

DAY THREE: Pedder Building Galleries
My husband finally arrived Thursday night and was able to join me Friday morning to catch up on all the gallery shows in the Pedder Building and White Cube. 
    Our first stop was Ben Brown Fine Arts, who had marble landscapes by Not Vital (poorly done and not as interesting as traditional furniture that employ the same techniques), portraits by Frank Auerbach, and a back room with Joan Miro works. Next door, Simon Lee Gallery had an Angela Bulloch show, which featured pulsating light boxes and a twinkling constellation installation. Her drawing machine at the fair was a big hit; it reminded me of Roxy Paine's sculpture machines. 
    Two floors up was Hanart TZ and their fantastic Qiu Zhijie solo show. He continues his exploration of maps and their social & political relevance with new ink paintings of landscapes viewed from a bird's eye view. It seemed that all the scroll paintings could be put together to create one, giant scene.

Next up was the new Lehmann Maupin space, which was smaller than I had expected. Their exhibition, Writings without Borders, explores the use of text in contemporary art and included a great piece by Zheng Guogu. I prefer Rockbund's show (discussed in my previous post) about gestures and language in art. 
    We quickly stopped by Pearl Lam's space, although I knew what to expect. Their Zhu Jinshi show was already shown in Shanghai earlier this year, and my eyes still glaze over when looking at his thick, bulging canvases in Hong Kong. I admire the gallery's promotion of abstract art but when it's as bland as this, you can't help but be bored. The artist Zhang Huan was walking around the show, being fawned over by the star struck gallery assistant, but he did not seem to care too much about the show either. 
    Our last stop in the Pedder Building was Gagosian Gallery. They had a big Basquiat show, a timely one after the artist's record breaking sale at Christie's the week before. This was my husband's first time seeing so many of his works in one place and he chided me for wanting to rush through the exhibition. It was admittedly a great selection; my favorite was a small painting of African masks by the door.

Leaving the Pedder Building, we went to White Cube; last year, they had a mediocre Anselm Kiefer show so I was pleasantly surprised (and taken aback) by the strange Nazi zombie party thrown by the Chapman Brothers, Jake and Dinos. Their vision of the apocalypse seems to pit these Nazis against Ronald McDonald. They made several, huge, intricate dioramas, each depicting graphic scenes of the end of the world, like Nazi heads on stakes, or several Ronald McDonalds hung from ropes. It was like Salo meets any number of zombie movies, but on a much grander, freakier scale. My husband and I were both very amused and entertained.

That night, we went to a dinner thrown by ShanghArt Gallery and the H2 Foundation for Arts & Education held at the Asia Society. The night started with drinks on the rooftop garden, which had a beautiful view of the city. I was exhausted from walking around the fair and looking at art so I couldn't motivate myself to mingle, even though I knew there were several artists in attendance. I did manage to introduce my husband to Wu Yiming, an artist he admires. Just days before, I had visited his studio in M50.

We were finally seated after what seemed like hours and my husband and I found our table in the back. Birdhead were already seated and soon a lady from Artron joined us. When it became clear that we were the only guests at the table, she took off to sit with her friends. I prepared myself for an awkward night, just me, my husband and the surly art duo sitting at a big empty table. But fate would be kind to us that night. Just as the speeches started, the artist Zeng Fanzhi bounds up to our table and plops down. I am giddy at this point because this is my husband's favorite artist. Zeng's show at ShanghArt's space in Fuxing Park back in 2003 was one of the first Chinese artists he experienced. "Who's that," my husband asks. "Zeng Fanzhi!"  I whisper shout. After the speeches, I introduce myself and we talk about his new shows this year and his art space in Beijing. Apparently, he was stressed out sitting at his own (VIP) table, surrounded by foreigners and unable to talk. So he decided he rather hide in the back (with us plebs).   

Our table ended up being THE table to be at. Some brazen art groupie, a pretty young Chinese woman, slid in between me and Zeng Fanzhi and proceeded to take a picture of the two of them (without asking!). The artist Shi Yong joined us (he and Zeng seemed like very close friends), as did Thomas Fuesser, who's new book Short Cuts was placed at every table (that's Zeng holding it in the picture above); he gave Zeng a private "viewing" of his book, which included a portrait of the artist as a very young man in Hamburg in 1991. Various other people came and went; some took pictures, some just wanted to say hi. Throughout it all, he was gracious and kind but never left our table. He and his media assistant Jane Jin told me about their new museum, which is slated to open in 2016, and he seemed excited about. My husband was having a blast, hanging out with his favorite artists, talking up a storm with Birdhead (who are usually so aloof!), and meeting new people, including Zheng Kai, who is in charge of purchasing art for this new museum in Wuhan. I caught up with my old friend David Chan (formerly of the Shanghai Gallery of Art), who is spending more time in Hong Kong and is also a new father! And like all new fathers, he showed off pictures on his phone. We ended the night smoking cigarettes with Birdhead and taking pictures with Sun Xun (another one of the artists my husband admires!) and Zhou Tiehai. All in all, a great night!

DAY FOUR: Fo Tan
Saturday turned out to be my final day of art in Hong Kong. While my husband went to hang out on a boat with some friends from business school, I headed out to Aberdeen, on the southern part of the island, to check out some far flung shows. I started at the Spring Workshop, which had a Qiu Zhijie (again! He was everywhere in Hong Kong!) show using maps again. This time he collaborated with students to create a map of ink and found objects. This was much more conceptual than his Hanart works but was nonetheless a great companion show. Afterwards, I stopped by Pekin Fine Arts, whose space I had seen in its raw form two years ago when Meg Maggio threw a rooftop party during the fair. She had video installations by Fang Lu, absurdist performances which showed the artist putting spaghetti in her hair, painting pig's feet toenails, and spitting what looks like chocolate out of her mouth onto canvas.

On my way to Gallery Exit, I stopped by Blindspot Gallery for their show of Chinese avant-garde photography from the 80s and 90s. Qiu Zhijie pops up again; at this point, he should claim Hong Kong as his territory. Also included in the show is Ai Weiwei, Han Lei, Rong Rong (who took pictures of Zhang Huan's early performances in Beijing, before he became a superstar), Zheng Guogu, and Gu Zheng, who is a very important figure for young photographers in Shanghai. He regularly curates shows of his talented students. 
    I never did find Gallery Exit but at this point, it was raining and I was beyond exhausted. My time in Hong Kong (at least my time spent with art) ended there in Fo Tan (except for my random run-in with Zhang Enli and his wife at the HK airport. He's everywhere!). There were so many more shows I never made it to but I'll be back in Hong Kong in two weeks (my husband's business school reunion). Hopefully I'll have time to see what I missed this time around. Check back for a more critical eye on Art Basel in my next post! 

What a miserable week it was last week; between the never ending rain and the sludge we call air, it was hard to leave the house. But I couldn't go to Hong Kong without doing some final catch up, this time on the Bund. The Rockbund Art Museum has really been stepping it up ever since Larys Frogier took over as director a couple of years ago. Their show, "From Gesture to Language", seemed tailor made for me. Works on paper as far as the eye can see! The show explores the connections between the visual and textual constructions in contemporary art. There is a mixture of prints from the Chalcography Department at the Louvre and original works commissioned for the show and sourced from other collections. Of the artists selected, Jenny Holzer and Xu Bing are the most logical choices, as both artists are known for text based installations and their play on language. This was my first time seeing Holzer's 2008 piece Purple, an installation of curved LED light tubes that display text from classified military data. The text, political in nature with parts redacted with XXX, is provided in its entirety on laminated sheets but the content didn't so much interest me as the experience of trying to read the display. The flashing neon lights and moving text sucked me into a swirling vortex, with the pulsating tubes creating a dizzying effect which quickly manifested into a pounding headache for me. I recommend everyone to watch the piece for as long as they can stand it. It's mesmerizing and disconcerting at the same time.

Most people know Xu Bing for his invented written language that plays on Chinese calligraphic traditions. His large scale scroll installation Book from the Sky consists of endless reams of scrolls that appear to tell a story but upon closer inspection, these scrolls are populated by entirely fictional "Chinese" characters. He was introduced to an American audience with Art for the People, a series of posters he made for the MoMA in New York City that appeared to be written with Chinese characters but were actually the English alphabet written to look like Chinese characters. In 2006, he elaborated on these posters with a carpet that is designed with this motif, and is included in this show. If I had the patience, I would try and decipher the story that makes up this carpet design but the carpet is far too big to examine every "word" closely. 
    One of my other favorites from the show include Bruce Nuaman's Good Boy Bad Boy (1985), which easily could have been inspirations for some of Zhang Peili's early works. As with most Nauman works, this piece makes you laugh out loud while creating an intense sense of unease. You'll have to see the video for yourself to experience the sheer insanity.    

What of the works on paper? Well, there are so many that I couldn't possibly bore you with descriptions of all of them. There are lovely prints by Kiki Smith, Terry Winters and Zhao Xuebing. But I was most intrigued by the print, Le Combat de Yesil-kol-nor, a detail of which is pictured above. It is part of a series of engravings that were exchanged between China and France in the 17th and 18th centuries. The lines of the etching are incredibly precise and fine. When I made prints in my student days, I always tried to create as much detail as possible but never really succeeded. This print almost makes me want to go back to school and try my hand at etching again. 
    After RAM, I headed to Bund 18, where Xu Zhen/ MadeIn Company had an exhibition in the lobby. The show consists of what he calls "action" paintings (some of which I had seen in his studio a couple years back); canvases were punctured with spray paint nozzles, out of which swaths of black paint were presumably "sprayed" on. My description is a little muddled but it's difficult to explain without showing an image. Unfortunately, the way the pieces were hung made it impossible to take clear photos. I was not a big fan of the show either way. The paintings looked like temporary walls surrounding the lobby café. I'm not sure what he was going for here.

My friend Alex's residency ended at the Swatch hotel and he's now in tropical Kuala Lumpur visiting his sister (who I went to high school with). He left a painting of his for me as a parting gift and my next stop was to pick it up from another artist's studio at Swatch. Willy Chyr is from Chicago and seems to have a lot on his plate. In addition to taking portraits of artists (he took a great one of Wu Ding lighting Jam's cigarette in her studio. This piece is part of Museum of Unknown's new show at the Power Station), he's also working on an "art" video game. To help design different levels of his game, he decided to make models of his virtual world. Pictured above is a funny little vignette in his ever expanding world. He bought hundreds of tiny figurines on Taopu to populate this world. I told him he should look up Liliana Porter, who makes incredible little worlds with just a piece of paper and a tiny toy.  

Willy took me down the hall to visit his friend Evgeny Bondarenko, a Russian artist. I hit the aesthetic jackpot with this one! Drawings and sketches everywhere. They were loose and improvisational but carefully composed at the same time. There are so few artists nowadays who work so traditionally, which is a shame because pleasures can be found in the familiar. 
    I'm off to Hong Kong Wednesday morning for Art Basel. I'll try to report regularly on all the happenings, the hot parties (which I dread), the gossip. Oh yeah, and the art.

While I was taking a little hiatus in Taipei (personal stuff), everyone else in the art world was preparing for Frieze New York (which just ended) and any number of art events occurring this spring. Of course, here in Asia, we're all anticipating the first edition of Art Basel Hong Kong. The fair itself is not new, it's just been re-branded after being bought by Art Basel. Thankfully, they've kept the model started by Magnus Renfrew with ArtHK and a majority of the participating galleries will still be Asia-based. All the hype surrounding Art Basel has certainly worked its magic because even I'm excited for it this year, even though I know it will look no different from previous years. I guess I'm contributing to the hype as well with my piece for Randian previewing some of the works shown in the Encounters section, which includes that incredible MadeIn piece that I talked about earlier in the spring. I can't wait for the fair to start so I can finally post pictures of it. I also wrote a piece for the International Herald Tribune about Hong Kong and the effect the fair has had; it will run May 23rd, the first official day of the event.

But before I head down to Hong Kong, I needed to catch up on what's been happening here in Shanghai after being away for a month. Luckily, M50 had a big block party this past Saturday and several galleries had simultaneous openings. I dragged my husband along this time, who was a good sport. Our first stop was OV Gallery; their exhibition Suspended Gravity featured Canadian artist Ed Pien and Dutch artist Karin van Dam. Karin's crazy knitted mobiles and alien creatures were delightful, if not a bit dangerous to navigate around. During the opening, someone knocked over one of her objects while trying to take pictures. Ed, who is an old friend from when he and his partner Johannes Zits had an exhibition at BizArt, created new paper cuttings using this cool reflective fabric; he had a jar of fabric cuttings for people to take.

After a brief stop at my friend Basmat Levin's crowded studio (she has a lot of paintings!), we headed to ShanghArt Gallery. I ran into Zhou Tiehai smoking a cigarette outside. I asked why he left Minsheng, hoping for some juicy answer, but alas, he simply said, "My time was up." He sounded relieved to be free and happy to be back in his studio producing works. But I guess this means the Minsheng Art Museum will no longer be the Museum for ShanghArt Artists. We then ran into Zhang Enli (one of my husband's favorite artists) and we had a brief conversation about his future projects. He has two solo shows this year, one in Genoa and the other in London. That man is so soft spoken, I had to strain to hear him, even though I was standing right next to him. 
    The new show at ShanghArt is a Tang Guo solo exhibition. This is his first show in five years (!) and I'm glad he took time to produce these new sets of works. I am a big time sucker for ink drawings and the gallery was full of them. His drawings were accompanied by one video, which I didn't have a chance to view, but seemed superfluous in the company of such beautiful ink pieces. Here's another one:

    We then stopped by the Suzhou River Art Center (formerly 1918 Artspace, my old friend Zhao Yonggang's gallery) which had an interesting group show. On the first floor was a wall with knives coming out of it; when you walked around to the other side, this was what you saw:

Here's a close up:

Talk about aggressive! We almost didn't make it upstairs but we ran into Lorenz, who insisted we go back and see the naked Lei Feng sculpture. Naked Lei Feng? In China, that's blasphemous! For those who don't know, Lei Feng was a model soldier and martyr of the Chinese Communist revolution. It's doubtful he was a real person but anyone who grew up in China in the 50s and 60s were taught to follow Lei Feng. For this piece, the artists took a typical Lei Feng sculpture (one that you would find in the lobby of some anonymous government building) and proceeded to sand away his uniform until he was "naked". On show was the result:

There was an accompanying video but it wasn't working when we were there. I'll have to go back and see the process in which the artists "strip" Lei Feng. 
    Next to the Suzhou River Art Center was a gathering of Shanghai hipsters drinking beer out of cans, all congregating outside Studio Rouge. I'm not sure what George is going for these days but he was showing LED stuff from Island 6. It almost seems as if these two spaces have merged into one. Whatever George is up to, it's working for him; he recently opened a space in Hong Kong. And speaking of Island 6, they had some random hot girl (foreign, not Chinese) walk around M50 handing out flyers for their new show. I guess that's one way of attracting people to your gallery.

At this point, it was time to eat. Walking around and looking at art makes you hungry! I thought OV would have a private gallery dinner but there was a big M50 shindig planned. We walked in with Karin and Daniel (from Randian) and of course, people were already halfway done with dinner. But it didn't matter because the food was god awful. The party was at a wedding hall so you can imagine what kind of slop was served: cold potatoes, beef that had been tenderized to death (if you live in China, you'll know what I'm talking about), and soggy fried dumplings. Of course, no one goes for the food. The artists and galleries were having a gay old time drinking and schmoozing and catching up with friends. Ed especially had an emotional dinner. He's been to Shanghai a few times for exhibitions and has gotten to know quite a few local artists. When he arrived to the dinner, it was as if Elvis had entered the building. One artist after another came up to greet and toast him. You couldn't blame him if he got a little weepy. 
    We have one more week before Art Basel Hong Kong, in which time I'll catch up with the rest of Shanghai. Later this week, I'll visit James Cohan Gallery, Rockbund Art Museum, and Bund 18 for a "Xu Zhen produced by MadeIn Company" show. So this is how he's branding himself now? What happened to just MadeIn Company? Perhaps the MadeIn experiment is coming to an end? Stay tuned to find out!