New ShanghART at Moganshan Rd.

 


Old ShanghART at FuXing Park
Covering an extremely immense territory and different contexts, contemporary art in China is a highly diverse and complex scene. (Hou Hanru)

 

 

SHANGHART

ShanghART was established in 1996 in Shanghai with the aim is to identify, support and promote the people which are at the core of the artistic creativity in China. With ten years of experience in the middle of the artistic development here, ShanghART’s expertise on contemporary Chinese art, the scope and quality of the artists represented by the gallery is unrivaled.  

 

Out of the many artists active in China today, ShanghART has over the years selected and established long term working relationships with many of the most innovative and significant figures. ShanghART represents now artists from all the different generations active in China today (from artists in their 20’s to artists in their 60’s) and covers all possible media (from video to ink, painting to photo etc,) What all the artists represented by ShanghART have in common however is the high quality of their work, their genuine search for artistic expression and their dedication to innovation and experiment..

 

ShanghART is not ‘streamlined’ gallery. We want to show the complexity possible today in Chinese art. We want to keep the genuine experimental atmosphere which characterizes us since the beginning and proved positive in fostering artistic developments and discovering new talent.

 

 

SHANGHAI

ShanghART has a special focus on artists living and working in Shanghai, a city which seems to foster well the kind of artistic individuality and innovation we are interested in. Artists like Zhou Tiehai, Zhang Enli, Ding Yi, Pu Jie, Xue Song, Shen Fan, Ji Wenyu, Wu Yiming and Shi Yong have each one in his own way over the years created a rich and complex body of work. Many strong, exceptional works are now created by artists of a younger generation, like Xu Zhen, Yang Fudong, Yang Zhenzhong, Xiang Liqing and Song Tao etc. However also the early innovators, like Li Shan and Yu Youhan, participate actively at the artistic discourse and drive their works further and created many good surprises.

 

CHINA

Many of the best artists from all over China choose to work with ShanghART. They include Zeng Fanzhi, Wang Guangyi, Zhao Bandi and Wang Yousheng from Beijing, Wei Guangqing from Wuhan, Tang Guo from Nanjing and Geng Jianyi based in Hangzhou etc.

 

HISTORY

ShanghART's first exhibition opened 1996 on a few walls in a Shanghai hotel. The gallery moved to an own space in 1999 and developed in the following years to an internationally active gallery (first gallery from China participating in major international art fairs like ART Basel, FIAC, Paris etc.). In the same years, the represented artists started to show more and more frequently in Biannual, exhibitions and museums around the world.

 

In 2000 ShanghART rented a large warehouse to store larger works. In 2002 the warehouse moved into an old textile factory at Nr 50 Moganshan Rd, an area which developed in the consequence to a vibrant artistic centre in Shanghai. In 2004, H-Space, a 750m2 exhibition space for contemporary art, was set by ShanghART and some friends in the same area. In spring 2005 the gallery moved finally to its present 400m2 space in Moganshan Rd

 

DOCUMENTATION

Catalogues on most of the artists represented by ShanghART are available. An extensive documentation on all the represented artists with biographies, list of works and text, is also made public on our website

 

SUPPORT

ShanghART sponsors actively exhibitions and artistic productions in China, a country which still has no real infrastructure to support innovative art.

 

SALES

Sales are what makes all the activities of ShanghART possible. ShanghART advices private and institutional clients on the collection of Chinese art and helps to build up entire collections.

 

ART FAIRS

ShanghART  participates at ART Basel (since 2000), FIAC Paris (since 2001).

 

SPACE

The gallery is located in an 400m2 space quite in the centre of Shanghai. ShanghART maintains also a second, 700m2 exhibition space (H-Space) in the same old textile factory which became, since we moved there

 

H-SPACE

An additional 700m2  space for larger exhibition maintained by ShanghART and friends (also in Moganshan Rd 50, bldg 18)

 

SHANGHART’s WWW

More than your ordinary gallery website: Over the years, www.shanghartgallery.com, has become a valuable source of information on Chinese art with documentation of thousand of works. 

 

MAILING LIST

Please register to our mailing list (info@shanghartgallery.com) to be kept informed about our exhibitions and activities of ShanghART Gallery and H-Space. Please visit also www.shanghartgallery.com for information on our artists and our program.

 

 

 

 

 

Shanghai's premier independent art gallery.

  

 

1996 ShanghART established

1999 ShanghART moves to Fuxing Park

1999 Suzhou Creek warehouse

2000 1st Participation at ART Basel (as first gallery from China)

2001 1st Participation at FIAC, Paris

2002 Moganshan Rd Warehouse

2004 H-Space at Moganshan Rd (bldg 18)

2004 1st Participation at Art Basel Miami Beach

2005 ShanghART moves to Moganshan Rd (bldg 16)

 

 

ShanghART, one of China's premier independent galleries for contemporary art, was established in 1996. It was also among the first in the country when it opened. At the time, Shanghai was resurgent, a dynamic and cosmopolitan city and an ideal place to monitor and display the wide and compelling range of modern Chinese art.

ShanghART has since become one of the centers of the Chinese art world, a primary source for collectors and curators, and a central gathering point for everybody interested in contemporary Chinese art. ShanghART works now with in many museums and institutions in China and around the world, and the gallery participates in major international art fairs, including Art Basel and Fiac/Paris.

ShanghART moved in 1999 to its present location in Shanghai's Fuxing Park, where we organize most of our exhibitions and keep many works in stock. We also maintain a significant amount of documentation on Chinese art, for research and consultation. The gallery is open seven days a week.

In 2000, ShanghART expanded, taking over a warehouse and exhibition space near Suzhou Creek (Moganshan Rd), to host its growing collection of ever bigger works and installation pieces.

The group of artists represented by ShanghART likewise has kept expanding. Today, ShanghART works with, exhibits, promotes and supports more than thirty of Chinas most interesting and prominent artists.

The artists belong to very different generations. Some were born in the 1940s and experienced all the tumult of Mao's revolutionary China. Some were born in the 1970s, into the worl of Deng's New China. And many were born in between, in the 1960s, a generation that knows of both ages without having been totally submerged in any.

The subject matter is equally diverse, as are the media. They work in ink, mixed media, oil, porcelain, photography, video, and even on the Internet. Some of the artists are already established names (e.g. more than 20 of our artists have participated in the Venice Biennale), while others have just started to exhibit and find their way. All of them excite us and keep us going.

Shanghai, June, 2003

 

 

In the mid-1990s, when ShanghART started exhibiting art here, Shanghai was a city of 15 million people, rich in cultural history, alive with entrepreneurial and intellectual energy, but bereft of appropriate places to display theprofusion of ground-breaking artistic talent. The public was largely unaware of the pioneering art being done here.

It may be that not that many cared, at first. Many artists felt isolated, but perhaps comfortably so after years of political pressure and public apathy. Many prospective viewers were more interested in more material benefits for economic reform: bigger apartments, nicer clothes. And, in the world art community, China attracted little notice; it had been mostly written off. We few who were following contemporary art in China were sneered at for buying, promoting tourist paintings, not the real sorts of art you could get in New York, Paris or Frankfurt.

But it is an ideal time to understand art it China, and Shanghai is an ideal place. The city, once one of the world's great metropolises, began its resurrection in 1992. The decade that followed was as kinetic an economic advance as the world has ever seen: skyscrapers, highways and entirely new districts erupted from rice paddies and abandoned factories. Cadillacs and BMWs supplanted bicycles. Today the highways are six levels, the high-rises aspire to be the world's highest, and there are waiting lists for Maseratis. A bicycle won't get you around much in the city anymore, and the tricycle we
used to move paintings from an artist studio to a gallery is long gone.

Indeed, Shanghai even has an art biennale that gets international attention, young artists show at the local art museums and China sends video and installation artists to the official China Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.