Shanghai Fair Director’s picks

Introducing the formidable TT Yang; Affordable Art Fair Regional Managing Director – China and also the Director of the first Affordable Art Fair in Shanghai. Alongside over twenty years of experience in brand and communication consultancy, TT is also an art connoisseur and enthusiast and founded the A-Circle – an arts education community which aims to help art lovers get closer to art.

In advance of Affordable Art Fair Shanghai (8 – 11 June, Shanghai Exhibition Centre), TT has selected her 12 favourite artworks from the fair, giving you a sneak preview of just some of the 1000+ works that will be on display. Artwork at the Shanghai fair ranges in price from 1,000 – 100,000 RMB, and with the broad range of styles and mediums on displays, there is something for everyone – no matter whether you’re a first-time buyer, or experienced collector.

Read on to check-out TT’s top picks….

Shi Yiran is a lecturer in Oil Painting at the Chinese Academy of Art. Her unconventionally charming artworks depict both a sense of realism and mysticism, while also exploring the semantics of colour itself.

In Spruces, I was particularly impressed by how she layers the colour using printmaking techniques. She allows the brushstrokes to mark intervals in time, allowing the details of the artwork to gradually become part of the whole finished piece. In sections of her works, Yiran Shi uses collage techniques which, within the whole piece, seem like fragments from a parallel universe. Additionally, the artist has crafted indentations and the abstract brushstrokes which create a poetry of surrealism.

This contemporary ink painting by Wei Quanru caught my eye. The artist was born in Weifang, Shandong Province and graduated from the Fine Arts Department of Nanjing University of the Arts. His works have been collected by major institutions such as the Shanghai Chinese Painting Academy, Shandong Artist & Designer Association, Jiangsu Provincial Federation of Literary and Art Circles, and the Jinling Art Museum.

This work uses traditional inks and colours on paper in combination with Western imagery, which creates a unique artistic painting style. In particular, the golden yellows and lime greens make the work bright and warm, bringing a simple childlike innocence to the work.

As a result of my early work experience, I have a love for technology. Using digital imagery as her language, new media artist Loxel Li has developed a unique avant-garde style that breathes fresh life into the new media genre. The artist takes inspiration from popular cultures such as fashion, science fiction films and classical art.

Many of Loxel’s intricately rendered installations and video works have been exhibited at the V&A, Linz Festival Berlin and the Westbund Art Centre, among other venues.

My first encounter with Mr Zhuang’s work was in Europe many years ago, since which his unique and personal expressions have been widely collected and exhibited by museums, galleries and cultural institutions around the world. I’m delighted that at the first Affordable Art Fair Shangahi, Xu Gallery will be presenting his work for Shanghai art-lovers to enjoy.

At a first glance, the viewer might think this work is an abstract paintings, but what they see is not, for instance, a sea of colourful ‘flowers’. Look closely and you will see that the artist has scattered colourful flower petals on rice paper, creating soft, gradual transitions between colours and shapes. The changing dynamic between the artwork and viewer just adds to the viewers enjoyment of the work.

The multi-faceted contemporary production of ceramics is gradually drawing the attention of younger generations to this time-honoured medium, and I have made several trips to Jingdezhen over the past few years to visit some of the new generation of artists.

The first time I saw a work by Peter Beard in Beijing, I was amazed at the skillful and unique glazing techniques used to create this Textured Blue Vessel. He layers glossy glazes, matte glazes, and semi-matte glazes over the surface of the vase. After firing, the juxtaposition of the glaze-coated and unglazed sections create undulations and colour variations that bring the work to life.

While contemporary as it may seem, it also conveys a respect for history. The artist has always been attracted by ancient villages and has tried to find inspiration from ancient Egyptian art and elements from the natural landscape.

The colours and details of this artwork are fascinating! The patterns resemble the motion of life, reflecting the artist’s experience of the East and his meditation and perceptions in search of “Zen”.

Jiang Zhenggen is a local Shanghai artist. In his abstract series of works named Drift and Moss Dots, he uses countless thin lines to arrange a vast and diffuse visual space, forming a dazzling and vast field of colour.

From minimalism to extreme complexity, and from maximalism to ultra-simplicity, I really like the artist’s Eastern philosophical wisdom and the natural expression of the spatial structure of traditional Chinese painting merging with modern contemporary abstract art.

I am guessing that the name Cao Shu may be familiar to you. He is a new media artist who specialises in technically reconstructing nostalgic ready-made images. The work I have selected, titled Sisyphus 3, for example, is created from dozens of GIFs of varying sizes, in which old photographs are transformed into subtly shifting scenes and renders, creating a world in the digital sphere.

Cao Shu mentions that there is no linear narrative in these 25 rotating frames, just like the story of Sisyphus, where the stone keeps reaching the top of the mountain and rolling down again, without a cause or an end. These snaphots seem to be interstitial, marking the spaces between a larger invisible scene.