Art Revolution Taipei 2012 (A.R.T. 2012) features leading and emerging galleries and artists around the globe. Hundreds of artists, ranging from the established to the latest generation of emerging figures will be represented in the show's multiple sections. In May, more than 26 thousand art lovers visited and enjoyed A.R.T. 2011.
The exhibition will include time-tested and cutting-edge paintings, sculptures, drawings, installation, photographs, and prints. Art Revolution Taipei 2012 is expected to be crowded with all types of people including art collectors, art dealers, artists, curators and other art enthusiasts. An even more important spot is that the organizer will invite hundreds of highly renowned and influential collectors to attend, which would certainly guarantee to bring great attention to the participating artists and their works.
Artists Are the Core
One thing truly “revolutionary” about Art Revolution Taipei is that the exhibition is curated around artists, rather than the gallery-oriented program as seen in most other shows. The floor plan and design all work around participating artist and the selection of their artworks, not around galleries. In fact, the whole idea is to make the exhibition in and of itself a great piece of art, so that artists and their artworks all contribute to the creation of this enormous masterpiece.
Art Your Compassion
This year’s Art Revolution Taipei also features a special thematic charity program: “Art Your Compassion,” which invites over 100 international and local celebrities to participate. All the proceeds will be donated to charity organizations.
In “Hundreds Of Celebrities’ Charity Sale,” each participating celebrity will create an artwork about the size 17.5 x 14 cm and priced at US$30. Each collector is allowed to collect two artworks at most. The name of the artist will be revealed to the collector only after they purchase the artist’s artwork.
Our Next Goal: Secure 80% and Aim For 90%
By the time the first annual Art Revolution Taipei was wrapped up at 5 p.m. on May 15th, 2011 and the result was made known to me, I was truly thrilled by it. I was certainly pleased with the wonderful 89.66% “hit rate,” which indicates the percentage of attending artists who had made sales, a number that really made you want to laugh out loud! Then immediately came a shocking thought: “What about next year then?” The 89.66% figure is like a wall standing in the way, you can’t simply pretend you did not see and just bypass it. I was immediately debating with myself: Should I announce this figure as it is?
It was A.R.T. organizer’s decision at the very beginning to set the guideline of not disclosing total sales. What we had not come to expect, however, was the extremely high ratio of attending artists making a sale. We’ve been to enough art fairs to know that if only 30% of the attending artists sold their works at the fair, most people would not come back for next year. 50% generally speaking is an acceptable ratio. If ever the ratio goes up to 70%, you would see smiling faces everywhere and everyone would be scrambling for the chance to come back next year. If there is one international art fair in the world that has the chance of achieving a 90% success rate, it would most likely be Art Basel - - and only Art Basel!
“Let’s just disclose the real figure as it is!” That was our conclusion after discussion and the other directors said to me: “Hold on, Art Director! Our goal for next year’s A.R.T. – simply to secure 80% and aim for 90%.”
Holy Shit! I know we are going to make a lot of people unhappy if we really set out to “secure 80% and aim for 90%.” Because in order to achieve that goal, no matter who wants to get in the show we must without exception stick to the rule of evaluating the artist, the works, and the prices. We've had to turn down some very attractive offers from certain applicants who simply just want to have presence at the fair; and because we demand every A.R.T. fair to look fresh, we would then require the returning artists to come up with something new and creative regardless of how well received their earlier works might have been. One artist’s duck painting sells very well and another sells a lot of vases – so well that some collectors were literally competing for the paintings on site and would have to eventually turn to the organizer in order to make reservations for the artworks. It then became our problem. Rather than figuring out a way to get the collectors what they want, what we did actually was to call the artists and tell them: “please don’t do the same stuff for the next three years.” It’s our job to communicate with the artists so that they don’t turn themselves into artisan painters, and it is our job to make sure that collectors will not acquire commodity artworks at A.R.T.
I was just talking to Vincent, the chairman of Ferrari Taiwan, the other day and he said to me that he now has very few friends left because almost all of them were complaining to him about the car’s steep price tag. While explaining to his friends that pricing was set by the Ferrari Headquarter in Italy and there is not much he can do about it, they would mock at him: “what kind of chairman are you anyway?” I could not help myself but burst into laughter upon hearing what he said, for I, like Vincent, already don’t have that many friends in the Taiwan art circle and now would probably have none left in the whole world as a result of the “secure 80% and aim for 90%” goal!
Lee Sun-Don
Art Director
