Chambers fine art arrives in Beijing

When Christophe Mao launched Chambers Fine Art gallery in New York seven years ago, few anticipated the market for contemporary Chinese art would develop into the cultural and financial behemoth it has become.

“At the time, my principal aim was to introduce the art that interested me to American collectors and museums,” explains Mao. “Since then a lot has happened.”

Between the launch of Chambers New York in 2000 and Chambers Beijing last month, a lot has indeed happened. Today, self-taught artists like Ai Weiwei are an integral part of the cultural mainstream. And though auction houses are selling works by Chinese artists for record-breaking prices, Chambers remains one of the few foreign galleries committed to Chinese artists’ cutting-edge sculptural, installation and performance work.

“Since I was born in China myself, it might seem curious that I am returning to open Chambers Fine Art Beijing,” muses Mao. “But Beijing has become so important as a center of contemporary art that I really had no choice if I wanted to keep abreast of everything that is happening here.”

Chambers’ new space in Caochangdi is an elegant, minimalist space that embodies the architectural aesthetic of Ai Weiwei, one of the first artists to move to the Caochangdi area. “His buildings do not call attention to themselves,” says Mao. “They do their job simply and unobtrusively.”

The gallery’s inaugural exhibition, Net: Re-imagining Space, Time and Culture, brings together specially commissioned works by seventeen artists who have risen to prominence with Chambers.

Wu Hung, who curated the show, also curated Lu Shengzhong’s solo exhibition at Chambers New York in 2000. Lu also returns to Chambers’ current exhibition with an elaborate paper-cut of an amphibious figure repeated in thousands of layers of circular red paper. The cut-out figures are affixed to a giant cube that hovers above the paper they were cut from. Panoramic photographs by Qiu Zhijia rolled into cylinders and a Google map painting by Hong Hao explore similar themes of space and representation.

The net, both the mutable grid-like tool and the concept of interconnectivity, is an apt image for an exhibition that aims to bring together the diverse range of artists Chambers has worked with, as well as reflect on the artistic community it has become an indelible part of. “It is a wonderful opportunity to reflect on the development of the gallery in the last seven years,” muses Mao.

THE DETAILS

Net:

Re-imagining Space, Time and Culture

Add:

Chambers Fine Art Red No.1-D, Caochangdi. 草场地红一号D座

Tel:

158-1026-3475

by Blake Stone-Banks