Garry and I went to the Beijing Art Fair today. The event feels spacious and open in design, with the bulk of it in one big airport-hanger like space. There are maybe 100 booths representing galleries from this city, other major Chinese, Korean, and Japanese cities and a smattering of European and American galleries. We’ll go back tomorrow, but here are a couple of works from today. Also, some t-shirts from today.
I’m thinking that there’s a relatively new internationalism among young people. I spoke to a woman in French today in the process of negotiating the photos of her t-shirt (see Left / Right). She’s a tour guide for French tourists. She, like most others wearing t-shirts with words on them had developed a particular and astutely fashionable individual style.
Last night on a spot on CCTV’s chanel 9 “Cultural Express,” 20 year-old Beijing-born virtuoso pianist, Yuja Wang described the Chinese edge in her playing as the way she can feel the poetry of the music. But clearly she also plays with exceptional skill, loves her instrument and is modest, yet fully confident (see You Tube for clips). This young woman struck me as emblematic of a sector of high-achieving midde-class contemporary Chinese young people.
