Another international gallery making a debut was the Cagla Cabaoglu Gallery from Istanbul, which brought 120 works by 17 artists. Collectors from Hong Kong and Belgium swooped in early and the gallery is looking to take some young Chinese artists back to Turkey for next year’s Turkish contemporary art fair.

In its relatively short history, ShContemporary has traversed a rocky road. Its first outing in 2007 was considered a great success, but was overshadowed by allegations that its co-director Pierre Huber was using the fair to further his own commercial interests. The 2008 fair was held just as the Global Financial Crisis began to unfold, and 2009's showing was dwarfed by the long shadow of that international economic debacle. Meanwhile, Art HK had burst onto the scene, and in May, at only its third outing, was being dubbed the "Basel of Asia."

Nevertheless, Colin Chinnery, ShContemporary’s director, appeared happy. He took over the reins last year, and revamped the event considerably. An artist and former chief curator and deputy director at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, Chinnery has approached his task from a curatorial point of view. "We are trying to give it a particular flavor, make it experimental, edgy, and ideas-based," he said. "We are in China so we have to look for new ways to do things. I decided that the standard art fair model works well in Hong Kong, but I don’t think it works here."

Last year, Chinnery added a thematic section to SHContemporary, a trend he continued this year along with the addition of a series of academic forums. The main discussion in these focused on notions of 'value' in art. "In a new market people can easily be distracted by price and this can become the identity," Chinnery said. "We wanted to discuss this. The Asian market is auction-oriented. But galleries are about artists and this fair is about galleries."

Other forums this year included one on the collecting of Asian contemporary art, as well as one that presented an impressive exploration of the formidable Italian painter Giorgio Morandi and his influence on Chinese artists. Chinnery explained, "We also discussed museums and their place in collecting. These are the places that create our history. It’s about what they collect and what they do not collect, their obligations and how this works in Asia."

At SHContemporary, the Asian collectors have seemed to prefer Asian art, but Chinnery is looking to change this, at least slightly, stating, "We are going to expand. About a quarter of the galleries here are western and we might expand this to a third but no more than that." One thing Chinnery will not be able to change immediately is the taxes the Chinese government slaps on art here. It is a problem faced by all the galleries in China, although most have worked out ways of making it easier for buyers. "Anything that comes into China is taxed," Chinnery said. "We all look forward to the day when we will do without the tax on art. It actually reduces the amount of tax the government gets in the end because it reduces the volume of sales."

So has SHContemporary been a success? Chinnery smiled with some confidence when asked this very question: "The galleries are happy. If they’re unhappy, they’re the first to speak out." Next year? "We have started thinking about that. It is important that we’re never predictable." Chinnery’s confidence is not shared by some in the art world's rumor mill, which was running hot in Seoul with the story that this would be the last year for ShContemporary.

You might think the story was planted to divert attention from KIAF’s rather disappointing year if it were not for the fact that most of those repeating the story were international gallerists. Asked to comment, Chinnery declared the story "ridiculous." ShContemporary has been a success, he asserted, so there would be no reason to stop at this point. The ongoing question is whether mainland China can really support more than one art fair. Now that tax-free Hong Kong’s Art HK has won the race to be Asia’s top fair in terms of the market, the challenge will be to stake out the spot of runner-up.