Three new art events open in Shanghai

Fair fever has hit China, with three new events in Shanghai this month.

"Art fairs are the fashion," says Leo Xu, the owner of Leo Xu Projects, a Shanghai contemporary art gallery. "It used to be museums, galleries, or magazines. Now it is fairs."

Though the fairs bring buyers and a buzz to Shanghai's art market, Xu says: "The explosion also shows that people are followers, rather than thinking creatively. It's like using [the chat app] Weixin or [the auction site] Taobao. There is a need to think outside of the box. But imitations, like 'Starfucks' coffee shops, are part of Chinese DNA."

The fairs are tapping into Shanghai's growing middle class, which is yet to be part of the global art fair circuit. Photo Shanghai (5-7 September), organised by the World Photography Organisation, was Asia's largest fair dedicated to the medium (around 70 galleries). The art mall K11 kicked off a broad-platform Art in the City festival with a fair featuring 15 of Shanghai's leading galleries (10-14 September). Then the Xuhui Riverside area will host the West Bund Art and Design Fair, whose international roster of galleries includes Hauser and Wirth, White Cube and Lisson (25-29 September). The fair director is the Shanghai artist Zhou Tiehai, who was the founding director of the Minsheng Art Museum and the BolognaFiere SH Contemporary Art Fair.

Arthur Solway, the director of James Cohan gallery in Shanghai, says: "Nobody knows which [of the new fairs] will emerge.

- The Art Newspaper