The explosion of China's art market and contemporary art scene in the 2000s was a once-in-a lifetime golden era.
It’s been nearly 17 years since Claudia Albertini was among the art world’s movers and shakers who attended the highly anticipated grand opening weekend of Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (now called UCCA Center for Contemporary Art) in Beijing in 2007, but the vivid memories of those landmark events still linger today.
Opening amid the exciting prospect of the following year’s Beijing Olympics, the UCCA transformed the factory buildings in a former munitions complex (better known as 798 Art District) into one of China’s biggest contemporary art spaces at the time. Scenes of the lavish series of events hosted by the center’s founders, Belgian collectors Guy and Myriam Ullens, who were among the biggest buyers of Chinese contemporary art at the time, made news headlines. Curator Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Victoria Miro director Glenn Scott, mega collector Uli Sigg, as well as artists Rebecca Horn and Sarah Sze were among the international art crowd, and reportedly 250 VIPs flew in for the occasion.
“It was amazing. It was really, really big,” Albertini said via the phone from Hong Kong, recalling those unforgettable times in Beijing. Currently based in Hong Kong where she is senior director for Massimo de Carlo, Albertini began her venture in Asia’s art world back in 2005 in the Chinese capital, working as a gallerist for the Italy’s Primo Marella Gallery; it was one of the handful of western galleries that opened in the mid-2000s in Beijing.
Opening events ranged from a private viewing of the center’s inaugural exhibition “85 New Wave: The Birth of Chinese Contemporary Art,” to a flamboyant party that included a performance by Spanish art troupe La Fura del Baus. There, two dozen performers dangled in the air amid a music and light show. A flamboyant dinner at a neighboring factory space decorated with fur, velvet, and bling, sat some 700 guests. There was also a very exclusive, VIP dinner inside the Forbidden City.
As Albertini remembers it, the opening of UCCA marked a new era. Not only did it elevate the status of 798, which became a not-to-be-missed cultural destination in China, it also brought optimism about the future of Chinese contemporary art, both on the global stage and locally amid the explosion of the Chinese art market.
“There was a lot of anticipation, a crazy boom from the mid-2000s leading up to the [2008] Beijing Olympics. There was this great energy and momentum,” said Albertini. “A crescendo of the audience, with more than just visitors coming from abroad. You could also feel that even the local public was getting more interested.” Meanwhile, many western galleries also opened shops in China during this period (ShangART opened in Shanghai in 1996). On the heels of Primo Marella Gallery, Galleria Continua and Pace Gallery, opened in Beijing in 2005 and 2008, respectively.
“At the time, you could sell anything when a gallery did a show. It was a crazy period,” Albertini recalled. In parallel, the secondary market for Chinese contemporary art grew exponentially, with auction records set in mainland and international sales one after another.
It was credited as a decisive era when the Chinese art world began taking on an active role in engaging an international dialogue in an open manner, and coincided with an economic boom that looked like a miracle to the West. China’s first taste of economic prosperity in the post-war era was a result of major economic reforms that followed the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown; in 2001, the country joined the World Trade Organization, cementing a decade that saw a global effort to promote the story of China as a rising star.
The story of art in the 2000s in China is by now one of legend; it was like a party that everyone hoped to last forever. A critical look back in hindsight, given the recent developments in the country’s economy and political circumstances, the decade was a once-in-a-life-time golden period that would make one wish to be able to turn the clock back.
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