Galleries hope to draw out ‘invisible Taiwanese collectors’ by showing at new Taipei art fair
- Private museum owners Yoshiko Mori and Budi Tek, and Shanghai billionaires, among visitors to Taipei Dangdai, but exhibitors aim to reach local collectors
- Yayoi Kusama, James Turrell, Yoshitomo Nara and Wolfgang Tillmans among the artists whose works are for sale at the inaugural event in Taipei
A new contemporary art fair in Taipei aimed at unlocking the potential of Taiwan’s art market opened on Thursday, with galleries testing the appetite for works valued at more than US$1 million. However, many of the transactions at the fair may end up being executed in Hong Kong so buyers and sellers can avoid the island’s complex tariffs.
Aggressive marketing before the fair’s opening drew hundreds of wealthy East Asians to the launch of the four-day Taipei Dangdai at the Nangang Exhibition Centre on the eastern edge of the city, its organiser said. UBS, the Swiss bank that is the main sponsor of the fair, arranged for its high-net-worth clients in Taiwan to attend, while another bank flew Shanghai billionaires by private jet across the Taiwan Strait, fair director Magnus Renfrew said.
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Major private museum owners Yoshiko Mori and Budi Tek also attended, as part of sizeable contingents from Japan and Indonesia, while familiar faces from Hong Kong, such as William Lim, were also spotted.
The event is billed as Taiwan’s answer to Art Basel Hong Kong but with a more local flavour. The 90 galleries present are a mix of international and local players; many Western galleries have brought over works by blue-chip artists that have rarely been seen at Taiwan’s art fairs before.
While many art fairs gauge their success by their international reach, most gallerists said they were at Taipei Dangdai not to sell to big international collectors but to convince a large body of “invisible Taiwanese collectors” to buy their art.
“We have to be here because otherwise it would be disrespectful to such a great collecting community. We are here to say to collectors, we are here for you to find us,” said Marc Glimcher, president of Pace Gallery, the multinational dealership headquartered in New York.