With the establishment of numerous art villages around Beijing, home of the Nation’s Academy of Fine Arts and, the capital is increasingly becoming a magnet for artist around the country. Their growth has in turn attracted dealers and burgeoning art community is flourishing.
Below, Tony Chan talks elaborates on the weaknesses of the gallery system.
However, the ever growing popularity of Chinese art around the world is shedding light problem that is increasingly seen as the major hurdle for the industry. Namely, the lack of credible museums and scarcity of independent curators to judge to the value of living artists’ work.
“It’s a problem of transparency,” says Jeff Crosby, Managing Director of Crosby Art Consulting, based in Beijing. Even organisations you would assume were unbiased in their assessments, such as art colleges and institutes tend to promote the own alumni, according to Crosby who has lived and worked in the Chinese art scene for more than a decade.
International art dealers ability to assess the true value of art works has been made even more difficult by allegations that some auctions in the mainland are rigged by unscrupulous art dealers.
“There have been allegations that some art dealers are using public auctions to buy back the work of artists at inflated prices, to force up the value of work they hold by the same artist,” continues Crosby.
This is not just a problem for those hoping to make money out Chinese art. This lack of transparency and potential for corruption make it very hard for young aspiring artists to break into the art scene by crowding out independent talent without the necessary means of access to find a patron able to sponsor their work.
“There are around 300,000 art students graduating each year in China,” explains Tony Chang, Curator of Amelie Art Gallery in Beijing’s 798 art district. “In order to keep these people in the art scene we need a more open market and more mature gallery system or we will lose these young people to other industries.”
Below: The work of Chen Qi, exhibited at Amelie Art Gallery, 798, Beijing.
The work of Chen Qi - embodying the transitions of Chinese society
