The CollectorWill big names at Taipei Dangdai contemporary art fair be enough to lure dealers back to Taiwan?
- The inaugural event, to be held mid-January, is going high-end with major international artists and galleries
- But has the island’s art market done enough to sell itself as a viable alternative to tax-free Hong Kong?
Suffering from post-holiday blues? Perhaps head over to Taipei and party on. The first edition of Taipei Dangdai opens in the middle of the month and it is shaping up to be the sort of champagne-guzzling jamboree that will make Art Basel regulars feel right at home. It even has the same sponsor as the global art-fair franchise – UBS, the Swiss bank. After all, the Taiwanese shindig is the brainchild of Magnus Renfrew and a few ex-Art HK comrades, who sold their Hong Kong fair to Art Basel’s owner, MCH Group, in 2011.
Renfrew has been working closely with an advisory board of collectors that includes Rudy Tseng, who loaned his Lee Mingwei The Mending Project (2009-2013) to the 2017 Venice Biennale.
Tseng tells The Collector the island has been neglected by international dealers ever since Christie’s and Sotheby’s stopped holding auctions in Taipei in 2001 and 2000, respectively.
“I have been going to Art HK and later Art Basel Hong Kong and witnessed the way it has lifted the art scene in the city, both in terms of the art market and the international visibility of its own artists and institutions. I hope that this fair will have a similar effect in Taiwan,” he says.
The Taiwanese capital already has Art Taipei, which turned 25 in October. But Dangdai, which means “contemporary” in Mandarin, is a more high-end affair. We are told 160 international galleries – of which a fifth already have Taiwanese showrooms – applied for the 90 booths.
