Shanghai’s ShContemporary art fair, which opened last night at the Shanghai Exhibition Center, is now in its fourth year and has ambitions as grand as its venue, a wedding cake of a building constructed at the height of Sino-Soviet friendship in 1955. The fair, under the direction of Colin Chinnery, formerly of the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, styles itself as not just a prominent outpost of the art market, but as a market of ideas.
This year, that might serve the event well: the distinguished side program of seminars and curated shows, including an exhibition of Italian favorite, painter Giorgio Morandi, may divert attention from an expected lack of excitement on the market side. After the extraordinary success of Art HK in May — which saw the Hong Kong fair dubbed the "Basel of Asia" — it was inevitable that other Asian art fairs would disappoint. This is certainly the case with the Korean International Art Fair, but Shanghai does have a card up her sleeve. The presence this year of the World Expo has put a spotlight on the city, and given extra buzz to everything that happens there.

ShContemporary is divided into two sections. The first, "Discoveries: Re-Value," is a curated exhibition in which around 25 artists, mainly from China, present works with themes pertaining to various notions of "value" — the value of the ordinary and the extraordinary, the value of physical objects compared to the ephemeral. The works tend to stray from this rather vague territory, but are nonetheless intriguing.

The other section in SHContemporary is the grandiloquently named "Best of Galleries," where selected international galleries based in Asia and the West prepare to lure serious collectors. The list is strong in local trendsetters like Pace Beijing, the venerable Hong Kong fixture Hanart, Pékin Fine Arts, Shanghai’s Andrew James Fine Art, and Beijing’s Platform China. And several of the leading Shanghai galleries, including the Bo Yin International Artists Gallery, are also included.

But the slate of overseas exhibitors seems thin. Some of the heavy hitters like White Cube and SCAI THE BATHHOUSE, which were attracted to Hong Kong in May, are missing. Seasoned players that did make the trip include J.Bastien Art from Brussels, Schuebbe Projects from Düsseldorf, Berlin’s Galerie Eigen+Art, the Kalfayan Galleries from Athens, Frantic Gallery from Tokyo, Aain Gallery Fine Arts from Basel, Future Perfect from Singapore, and Sydney’s Grantpirrie.

In contrast, this year, SHContemporary is bringing real firepower to its seminars. Featured speakers include Tan Boon Hui, the director of the Singapore Art Museum, Wang Huangsheng, the director of Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Arts, Zhang Zikang, the director of the Today Art Museum in Beijing, and Frances Morris, the head of Tate Modern's collection of international art.

A major item on the program tomorrow is a workshop on Morandi. A mini-retrospective of the artist has been arranged with the Museum of Modern Art in Bologna (MAMbo), with the support of the region of Emilia-Romagna. Three works from the Morandi Museum in Bologna are on show along with Paolo Ferrari’s photographs of Morandi's studio. The workshop, led by Chinnery, will feature an address by Gianfranco Maraniello, the director of MAMbo. Two eminent Chinese art academics from Hangzhou will discuss Morandi’s influence on Chinese modern and contemporary art.

As the Asian art market flourishes, it is also developing its own style. The SHContemporary handbook notes: "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 throw 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."

For their part, the foreign gallerists were bullish. Newcomer to the SHContemporary, Kerslin Wahala from Berlin's Galerie Eigen+Art, was upbeat on the opening day. "I was impressed at the mixture of art and I was very impressed at the knowledge and enthusiasm the collectors had," she said.
Veteran exhibitor Christa Schuebbe, who has been with SHContemporary from its first year, said she believes that persistence is the key to success in the international market. "The so-called high quality galleries rush in here and if they do not sell everything at first they pack up and go home," Schuebbe explained. "They do this all over the world. It’s hard working with Chinese collectors. Their tastes are changing and of course they, like collectors anywhere, prefer to buy works from their own country. You have to persevere — this is a very strong, financially impressive market."

SHContemporay closes on Sunday September 12. Look for ARTINFO China's full report next week.