Nov 10 2017

Highlights from West Bund Art and Design 2017

by Chloe Chu

Boers-Li Gallery (Beijing/New York) brought a 12-channel video installation by ZHANG PEILI, titled Uncertain Pleasure (III) (1996). On each of the TVs is a close-up of an anonymous someone incessantly scratching at a body part, including armpits, backs of hands and wrists. All photos by Chloe Chu for ArtAsiaPacific.

The fourth West Bund Art and Design fair opened on November 10 in a cavernous, converted aircraft factory in the burgeoning art district west of Shanghai’s Huangpu River. The event was a major anchor in the city’s annual art week, which saw a flurry of exhibition openings at nearby institutions including Yuz Museum, Pond Society, Shanghai Center of Photography and Qiao Space, bringing together diverse groups of guests from across the world. While galleries slowly gathered sales momentum on the first day, many exhibitors were still holding their breaths at the evening’s close, planning for a long game in an exciting but unstable corner of the Chinese market.

Notably missing from the fair were nudes and Korean artists. South Korean art, music and TV shows are being blocked following political tensions between Seoul and Beijing this year. Meanwhile, West Bund’s roster of galleries has morphed over the fair’s iterations, with various alternative fairs vying for the same exhibitors. First-time participants in 2017 included Hanart TZ (Hong Kong) and Lisson Gallery (New York/London), which sat front and center at the entrance, next to returnee Ota Fine Arts (Tokyo/Singapore/Shanghai). West Bund has nevertheless kept to the same model of an intimate size, with 70 participating galleries across three sectors and a focus on blue-chip art displayed in generously sized booths, which made for the opportunity to show and see some thought-provoking projects. Here are some highlights.

RIRKRIT TIRAVANIJA’s Untitled 2017 (and “the creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already, it was impossible to say which was which”) (2017) draws from George Orwell’s 1945 novella Animal Farm and quotes Joseph Beuys’ use of gold leaf in his seminal performance How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare (1965) to comment on the world’s absurdity. A marble parrot, perched in the center, reinforces the notion of language’s powerlessness—channeled through Beuys. The work was presented by Tommy Simoens (Antwerp) as part of the ArtReview Asia Xiàn Chǎng sector.

CAO YU’s The Colorful Clouds No. 3 (2017) comprises padded black bras—meant to enhance, protect, but also restrict the female body—stitched together in a “found-canvas.” The work was shown at the booth of Galerie Urs Meile (Beijing/Lucerne), and coincides with the artist’s first solo exhibition in the gallery’s outpost in the Chinese capital, titled “I Have an Hourglass Waist.” There, visitors are encouraged to trample atop similar soft sculptures constructed out of bras.

Ben Brown Fine Arts’s (London/Hong Kong) presentation included Diabolic Flower V (2017) by HYON GYON, which was also shown in her recent solo exhibition in Hong Kong. The work comprises what appear to be fragments of a scorched qipao among lumps of candle wax and pigment—a result of the artist’s explorations of burning as a means of shamanic purification.

POLIT-SHEER-FORM OFFICE’s Do the Same Good Deed (2014) features the most outrageously smiley and gung-ho mob of volunteers cleaning a tour bus to an anthem-like soundtrack, from which the audience can decipher the repeated chant “We are Polit-Sheer-Form!” The collective are currently also participating in the group exhibition “Cosmopolis #1” at Centre Pompidou, and will be orchestrating a similar performance with volunteers in Paris. The single-channel video can be seen at the booth of Bank Gallery (Shanghai).

First-time participant at the fair Hanart TZ Gallery (Hong Kong) brought works by Hong Kong’s beloved, self-taught modern master LUIS CHAN. Having lived through both the Japanese occupation as well as the city’s economic boom in the 1970s, Chan’s works often depict a colorful cast of characters and composite narratives. The Cross (1968, right) and Horse-Legged Lady (1969, left) are both examples of how Chan documented his own encounters of the changes unfurling in Hong Kong’s modern era.

SHEZAD DAWOOD’s Avebury Tapestry (2017) includes the outline of an Avebury rock—a Neolithic monument with stones arranged in three rings, located in Wiltshire—screen-printed on top of textiles created by Pakistani nomadic weavers throughout the 1970s and fabric waste culled from factories. The artist often uses these textile works to reflect on the motifs seen in his films. The tapestry was presented by Timothy Taylor (London).

At the booth of TKG+ (Taipei), JOYCE HO explores the violence of the everyday, drawing from her background in theater and set design to create scenes suggestive of tension, utilizing just one or two common objects. In Everyday Practice (2016), two clasped gloves evoke hands that are both working with and against each other.

Capitalizing on the West Bund’s three-day installation time allowance, Galerie Perrotin (Paris/New York/Hong Kong/Seoul/Tokyo) chose to continue their strategy of spotlighting a single artist with an extensive, detailed presentation for the second year. For MARIA TANIGUCHI, creating “Brick Paintings” (2007– ) is how the artist gathers brief moments of order in the chaos of Manila, where she lives and works. She sees the paintings as accumulations of time, and as living objects that will gradually decay. At Perrotin’s booth, these canvases were accompanied by a new installation, titled Runaways (2017), sculpted out of Javanese plum wood. Resembling 1s and 0s, the work is also evocative of binary systems, which are already being slowly replaced by vector coding.

At ShanghArt Gallery, Chinese-American artist DAVID DIAO explores his family history and the confluence of East and West, autobiography and the lineage of avant-garde abstraction in Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors 1 and 2 (both 2017).

Over at the fair’s Talent sector, launched this year for the first time, MOUNTAIN RIVER JUMP! invited viewers to participate in a tarot reading by meditating on a question in front of a screen with rapidly shuffling tarot cards and then snapping a picture when they felt the moment was right. The captured card was the answer. The interpretation for this image reads: “Someone who is brave and comes out to solve problems while others are hesitating.” The work, titled Chinese Animal Idioms (2017) was presented as part of the duo’s solo project at the booth of Canton Gallery (Guangzhou).

Chloe Chu is the associate editor of ArtAsiaPacific.

West Bund Art and Design runs in Shanghai’s West Bund Cultural District until November 12, 2017.

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