DISCOVERIES: RE-VALUE@SHCONTEMPORARY 2010 SHANGHAI ART FAIR INTERNATIONAL CONTEMPORARY ART EXHIBITION (art fair)

OVERVIEW

EXHIBITION SYNOPSIS

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.

The Exhibition

DISCOVERIES: Re-Value is a group show of 26 artists curated by Mami Kataoka, Manray Hsu, and Colin Chinnery at ShContemporary that asks pertinent questions about the meaning of value from different perspectives: a show that questions the nature of the art market within its own commercial context.

Two curators are working with Fair Director Colin Chinnery:

Mami Kataoka is joining ShContemporary curatorial team for a second year. As Chief Curator of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, Kataoka recently curated a major retrospective of the work of Ai Weiwei: “According to What?” Other prominent shows created by Kataoka include “Laughing in a Foreign Language” at the Hayward Gallery, and “Follow Me!: Chinese Art at the Threshold of the New Millennium” at the Mori Art Museum.

Manray Hsu is an independent curator based in Berlin and Taipei who in 2008 was co-curator of the Taipei Biennial. Manray served as a jury member for the 49th Venice Biennale, and the 2006 Hermes Prize for Korean Contemporary Artists. Other recent curatorial projects include “Naked Life” in 2006 at the Taipei Museum of Contemporary Art, and “Cracks on the Highway” in 2007 at the MAC Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro.

The Conference

Re-Value: The Construction and Consumption of Value in Contemporary Art is a conference hosted by UACC & ArtTactic in collaboration with ShContemporary. Split between two sessions, the seminar will first invite representatives from museums, art journals, foundations, auction houses and galleries to discuss the art system that constructs value from art; and then invites collectors to discuss value from the other side – those who recognize and consume the value in art.

Sep 10, 2010