Art in Action and reaching out

Yuko Mohri's installation piece Circus highlighted the New Media Section of Art Taipei 2013. Pia Hsieh / For China Daily

Art Taipei, which celebrated its 21st anniversary this year, is a chance to see a myriad of works in one place and perhaps take home a piece that speaks to you.

But it is more than a collector's fair. It is a chance to enjoy the vitality of the region's burgeoning art scene, in some cases to even watch works created over the course of the show.

Art Taipei 2013's theme "After 20, 20 After" celebrated the longevity of Asia's oldest running art fair and signaled its commitment to nurturing Asian art.

The event, which is run by the Taiwan Art Gallery Association, drew 35,000 collectors and art lovers.

Art Taipei reaches out to aspiring collectors.

Daisuke Miyatsu was a regular Japanese office worker when he began collecting 19 years ago. He now owns more than 300 pieces.

He made a whirlwind tour of the fair, pointing out galleries and artists to watch. Several of the galleries were based in Beijing, including Platform China which focuses on young artists from Northern China and Gallery Yang which represents 40 Chinese artists aged between 25 and 35. For more established Asian artists, he recommended looking to Pearl Lam Galleries who have spaces in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Miyatsu's tastes certainly seemed to resonate with collectors at the fair. Newcomer Miguel Aquilizani, 27, was a huge hit, selling all 10 pieces on display. Recent art school graduate Kondo Aki's abstract art, displayed by Tokyo's ShugoArts, also enjoyed plenty of attention.

Additionally, the fair-wide initiative "First Art" affixed discreet tags under art works of high quality at reasonable prices. The aim was to highlight good starter pieces for new collectors, and judging by the amount of red dots the pieces garnered, it was a success.

Additionally, Fresh Art, an initiative by Art Taipei since 2011, invites galleries established in the past five years to mount solo or two-person exhibitions, which must be "full of young energy, creativity, and originality."

The chance to reach out to art collectors of Taiwan - who are among the most prolific in Asia - and regional collectors from Singapore, Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai attracted 148 galleries from around the world this year.

The fair was split into four sections: Art Galleries, covering modern classic to contemporary avant-garde from around the world including works by Picasso, Tracey Enimen and Damien Hirst; Art Classic, covering the first generation of oil-painting masters in Taiwan; New Media and Fresh Art.

New Media is a rapidly growing market in tech-savvy Asia. Attendees were enthralled by South Korean artist Lee Nam Lee's video art subversion of classic artworks on LCD monitors. Mona Lisa is attacked by war planes and torpedoes, the explosions turning into flowers until she is entirely obliterated.

In the Battle of Civilization a subtly animated traditional Chinese scroll showing a peaceful mountainside becomes overrun by landmark skyscrapers from around the world and the ensuing pollution.

The director of Hong Kong's Kwai Fung Hin Art Gallery was impressed by the response of local collectors to Lee's work, praising "their deep understanding of new media works. I was very surprised to see how knowledgeable they were in this area".

Filipino artist Poklong Anading - whose most recent collection used lightboxes as a medium - believes that the growing integration of technology into our daily lives and our resulting ever-shifting focus where "people keep on moving even if we sit" is helping people open up to New Media Art.

"People become more open, rather than fixing their mind to what they know," Anading said.

A diversified program of open art lectures also ran in tandem with the show.

Art Taipei, which generated on-site sales of about NT$1 billion ($34 million) this year, went well beyond the remit of a mere art marketplace.

The opportunity to see classic works and the push toward New Media and up-and-coming artists presented attendees with the chance to both appreciate the ways in which art is moving forward and the opportunity to consider the role that art plays in our lives and the path of humanity, in the past, present and future.

The organizers promise that next year's fair, which runs from Oct 30 to Nov 3, will be even bigger and more diverse.

For China Daily