On November 13, the West Bund Art & Design Fair opened alongside the 7th Shanghai International Art Fair.
The Paper Art News observed that nearly 200 galleries and art institutions from around the world gathered across five exhibition halls: the West Bund International Convention and Exhibition Center, West Bund Art Center Hall A, Dome Art Center, West Bund Whirlpool, and West Bund Dream Center Gate M Dream Factory. One of the biggest highlights of this year's West Bund Art & Design Fair was the debut of the brand-new West Bund International Convention and Exhibition Center, with a significantly increased venue area, allowing visitors to move freely among the artworks without feeling crowded.
“From the annual art fair to the various exhibitions and events surrounding it, you can feel a positive energy. Shanghai’s passion for art is real,” a participating gallery owner told The Paper.
The West Bund International Convention Center serves as the gallery section of the West Bund Art & Design Fair.
Just after 1 p.m. on November 13th, the VIP day opened, and visitors flocked in. Familiar galleries, different arrangements, felt both familiar and fresh.
Choose an entrance to enter. On one side are works by Neugehheim Schneider with a Nordic flair. They are by Eliasson and Billy the Mischievous. The former, in the overlapping shades of yellow, green and purple, restrainedly presents an exploration of perception, movement and self-awareness; the latter depicts a forest, as if entering a tree where the shadows sway like music, bringing with it an "unpredictable dream experience".
Eliasson's work at the Neugheim Schneider booth
On the other side, the Ota Gallery still features Yayoi Kusama, with her signature yellow polka-dot pumpkins and pink polka-dot dogs, presenting a different kind of color. Meanwhile, Chen Wei presents a tranquil and internalized world through photography and installations, while the Perrotin booth constructs a fairytale-like fantasy space.
Perrotin booth at West Bund Art & Art Fair
Intergenerational dialogue between Chinese and foreign gallery artists
Located in the center of the exhibition hall is ShanghART Gallery, which presents a cross-generational dialogue around four themes: "Hidden Paintings," "Dialogue with Masters," "The World of Metaphors," and "Landscapes in the Heart." Zhang Enli, Li Shan, Yang Fudong, Zhang Ding, Hu Xiangcheng, Han Mengyun, and others bring their insights.
Lawrence Hepburn, founder of ShanghART Gallery, told The Paper, “In recent years, we have wanted to study more deeply what has happened in the past thirty years. The decisions these artists made when creating their works, their theories, and their judgments all deserve to be re-understood. In the past, we just thought a certain artist was good, but now I think more about why he did what he did at that moment? What is his relationship with the times? Chinese contemporary art has moved from the passionate ‘avant-garde’ period to a more rational stage. Today’s young people are different. They have grown up in an environment of Sino-Western exchange, and many have overseas study experience. Today’s world is a more level-headed and more international world.”
ShanghART Gallery booth at West Bund Art & Art Fair
In fact, the gallery sections on the first and fourth floors of the West Bund International Convention Center alone bring together artworks from 65 countries and regions, with overseas works accounting for as much as 60%. While exhibiting international artists, galleries and institutions from home and abroad also bring a wealth of contemporary Chinese art creations, showcasing the innovative vitality within the local context.
West Bund Art & Design Fair
Taking Beijing Commune as an example, they have booths at West Bund and ART021. At West Bund, they brought artists of different ages and sizes, such as Zhang Xiaogang, Mao Yan, Wang Guangle, and Ma Qiusha, and their works. Many of their works were sold during the setup of the exhibition the day before VIP Day.
“Shanghai’s open business environment makes art more accessible here. Shanghainese are very receptive to new things and creativity, and they are full of enthusiasm for it,” Leng Lin, founder of Beijing Commune, told The Paper. “From the annual art fair to the various exhibitions and activities surrounding it, you can feel a positive energy. The city’s passion for art is real.”
West Bund Art & Art Fair Beijing Commune Booth
Of course, some international galleries, limited by manpower, only participated in the West Bund Art & Design Fair, such as White Cube, Taylor Gallery, and Galleria Continua.
The West Bund Art & Design Fair was even the only art fair White Cube participated in in mainland China this year. Regarding the changing art scene in Shanghai, Zhao Tingting, White Cube's representative in China, stated that collectors are becoming increasingly professional, and the number of people who love art is also constantly growing, resulting in a positive and vibrant art market. White Cube's exhibit included a large-scale oil painting by Baselitz from 2014, which sold for over one million US dollars. In addition, several important artists represented by galleries, including Damien Hirst, as well as young artists, were also featured at the White Cube booth.
The White Cube booth features a work by Baselitz in the center.
Among the exhibits, Damien Hirst's work featuring butterflies, and Kiki Smith's butterfly installation at the Taylor Gallery booth nearby, seem to showcase different artists' interpretations of the same subject. The work of Leon Kossoff, a representative artist of the London School, is also quite eye-catching. He spent his life depicting London street scenes, often using black lines to construct dreamlike landscapes. However, the work brought by Taylor Gallery this time features brighter, warmer colors, perhaps because this painting depicts his childhood neighborhood. Meanwhile, 98-year-old Katz has a small work from 1980, framed at the same time. This may be the earliest work created on the West Bund this year.
Kiki Smith's butterfly installation at the Taylor Gallery booth at West Bund Art & Art Fair
Taylor Gallery booth at West Bund Art & Art Fair
At the Galleria Continua booth, a vibrant array of "energy" filled the air. Besides art fair regulars like Antoni Gormley and Anish Kapoor, the booth also featured Carlos Cruz-Diez, a French-Venezuelan artist with a permanent project at the North Bund Shipping Center. Through the precise combination of materials and painting, Cruz-Diez fused the scientific and logical aspects of art. According to Peng Yongyi, director of Galleria Continua, the West Bund Art & Design Fair is not merely a trading platform, but also possesses profound cultural and educational significance: "I've always felt that art fairs are not just about sales and collections, but also a process of aesthetic education. They cultivate public aesthetic awareness and attract more young people to pay attention to and understand art."
Carlos Cruz-Diez's work at the Galleria Continua booth
In addition, The Paper observed that international blue-chip galleries such as MDC Gallery, Hauser & Wirth, Thaddaeus Ropac, and Spohr Gallery were all located on the first floor of the West Bund International Convention Center, showcasing creations from different generations of global contemporary art. Meanwhile, outstanding Chinese galleries such as Capsule Gallery, East Gallery, Hive Center for Contemporary Art, and Blank Space will also convey new perspectives and expressions from the Asian field to global art institutions, collectors, and art lovers.
West Bund Expo blank space booth
Beyond the first floor, the fourth floor exhibition area brings together a wider variety of art forms, with many artists' new works making their debut on the West Bund, showcasing the "present tense" of the global art market.
West Bund Art & Design, 4th Floor Exhibition Area
Five main venues and six themed sections expand the boundaries of the art fair.
This year's art fair presents six thematic sections across five venues, linking the five-kilometer waterfront lifestyle along the west bank. Diverse forms, including art, design, large-scale installations, performances, and moving images, will engage in in-depth dialogue with the architectural spaces, continuously expanding the boundaries of the traditional art fair.
West Bund Art & Design Exhibition Area
The "Xiàn Chǎng" section breaks through the limitations of traditional exhibition booths, providing ample space for large-scale installations and performance art. Forty artists from home and abroad participated, including Lawrence Ceckney, Chen Yanran, Qiu Anxiong, and Tommi Toija.
The Xiàn Chǎng section features Hu Xiangcheng's solo project, "The Stranger's Journey II," at the West Bund Art Center.
Among them, the West Bund Art Center will highlight Hu Xiangcheng's solo project "The Stranger's Journey II", which brings together his important paintings, sculptures and installations from the 1990s to the present in a space of nearly 1,000 square meters; Lauris Cecney will present his iconic "Liquefied Wall" series, which reshapes the ideal dimension of "surface" by combining technology and nature; and Lin Aojie's new work "Super Me" will be an inflatable sculpture suspended in the dome art center, bringing the audience a light and humorous "giant self".
West Bund Art & Design Dome Center Exhibition Area
The “Design/Delight Design Platform” and “Perspective Unit” sections are presented in spaces such as the West Bund Art Center, Dome Art Center, and West Bund Whirlpool. The “Perspective Unit” showcases outstanding works by resident artists selected by tbh Garden for 2024-2025, including Tobias Kaspar, Lao Tie Design Company, and Fabrizio Hazard, who were invited to live and work at VILLA tbh for a month, creating a series of unrestricted art works themed around textiles, nature, and home.
Exhibition presented by the Spanish Cultural Center in Shanghai – Cervantes Institute
The Spanish Cultural Center in Shanghai—the Cervantes Institute, in collaboration with the Balearic Islands Institute (Instituto de Estudios Baleáricos, IEB), presents the exhibition "Flowing Nature: The Convergence of Instinct and Memory in Images—A Photographic Dialogue between the Balearic Islands and China" at the West Bund Dome Art Center. The exhibition features contemporary photographic masterpieces by three photographers—Toni Amengual, Tomeu Coll, and Sílvia Prió—showcasing the unique cultural perspective of the Balearic Islands through diverse artistic languages.
West Bund Art & Design, West Bund International Convention Center
These extended activities also demonstrate that, beyond its core transaction functions, the West Bund is creating a tangible, experiential, and sustainable urban model for art and lifestyle for its audience.
