Zhang Wenjia Appointed As Phillips Regional Director In China

Phillips has announced Zhang Wenjia’s appointment as the auction house’s regional director in China. She will be based in Shanghai.

Zhang joins Phillips with abundant experience with East Asia’s art scene. She has previously served as senior advisor to Christie’s auction house in Shanghai. Before that, Zhang was the executive director of the nonprofit Yuan Space in Beijing for four years, and served as the gallery director of ShanghArt in the Chinese capital from 2008 to 2010.

The appointment of Zhang is part of an aggressive expansion strategy that Phillips has adopted in East Asia, in particular in China, which has one of the largest art auction markets in the world. With Sotheby’s and Christie’s both having established firm footholds in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing, and homegrown, state-backed auctioneers Poly Auction and China Guardian wooing a growing roster of Chinese art collectors, Phillips has rapidly expanded its East Asia team, bringing in Jane Yoon as international specialist and director of Korea, Cindy Yen as general manager in Taiwan, and Kyoko Hattori as regional representative in Japan.

In November 2017, Phillips provided an auction platform for Japanese new-media “ultratechnologist” group teamLab for the first time, selling a five-channel digital waterfall for HKD 1.88 million (USD 238,000). Earlier, coinciding with Christie’s spring series in Hong Kong, Phillips’s 20th century and contemporary art and design sale included works by artists with cult-like followings, such as New York street artist KAWS and Japanese furniture designer Shiro Kuramata, and offered photographs taken by Andy Warhol in China in 1982 on the auction block.

Elizabeth Wang is an editorial intern at ArtAsiaPacific.

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