$hop till you Drop in the Biz City... or die of boredom first

So the good folks at Bizart finally opened a commercial gallery. I mean we were all waiting for them to do it- yep just waiting for another raw expression of capitalism to rear its almighty head in the (con)temporary arts of China. I mean I thought it was a joke- tongue in cheek, irony, you know another smart ass expression of contemporary arts malleability of form - (Cattelan had his Wrong Gallery, Oldenberg had his Store, even our main man XuZhen had his Shanghart Supermarket at Miami Basel…Pure conceptual wit was what I was expecting of the creators of HeYShehui, art baba, HiPIC and the experimental mindspace that Bizart itself offers to the otherwise intellectually deprived artgoing public of Shanghai
but Noooooo -This is a real gallery that supports, a’hem, emerging talent, uhhm that is mostly talent in the form of paint on canvas AND from the likes of their first colorful show in this intimate though, very white, cubelike space, stuff priced to $ell. Yep, a completely original anomaly in the M50 (Shanghai’s very commercial gallery district) setting. The idea is to sell, sell, sell… to raise money for the idealistic, artistic creativity of its owners. Funny that they are conveniently located in a nice turn-of-the-century stable building right next door to the gallery where most of these owners themselves exhibit and sell their goods- Shanghart. According to artist, Shi Yong- Lorenz (Hebling Shanghart’s owner) is happy to have the competition so closely nearby.
SHOPPING GALLERY –as it is aptly titled - is a partnership between artists: Xu Zhen, Shi Yong, Liu Jianhua, Jin Feng, Yang Zhenzhong, Vicky (from Bizart) and one other person that I can’t recall at the moment. Either way the creative minds of Shanghai have finally jinqian 进钱 been soaked by the late Spring currency rains… I’m not sure that makes it through in translation BUT Shopping Gallery is a C- idea.

Opening notes: Yan Lei was in town complaining of high blood pressure(yet another artist fallen to high blood pressure in the last half year) and the opening dinner, held in a Neo-Napoleonic nightmare of a restaraunt was attended by a Serbian curator that lives in Dubai, the omni present MianMian and all the usual suspects