Gallery Crawl

Confirmation this week that yet another important Beijing Gallery is setting up shop in the Caochangdi area. Marella Gallery, long a fixture of 798, has a new official address of Beigao, but its new location on the tree-lined airport side road puts it firmly in the orbit of 798’s great rival, Caochangdi.

So what’s the attraction that’s lead a raft of important galleries (and artists) to set up in dusty Caochangdi? Mostly the fact that it isn’t 798.

Pioneers of the area, the China Art and Archive Warehouse (CAAW) and Ai Weiwei, were originally attracted by the open spaces to build and spread out. Those who’ve come after, some to rent spaces designed by Ai Weiwei himself, have been attracted by the lower rents. 798’s rents have skyrocketed in recent years and even the onset of the great Global Financial Crisis has failed to put a brake on.

Meanwhile Caochangdi is approaching critical mass, having just enough important galleries to attract the curious away from big brother 798. Important spaces now calling Caochangdi home include Galerie Urs Meile, Pékin Fine Arts, ShanghART, Chambers, Boers-Li, Platform, F2, Three Shadows Photography Art Centre and, another high-profile defector from 798, White Space.

The thing that has prevented the area from really taking off, however, is how spread out it is. Unlike 798 which is easily strollable, Caochangdi splits into distinct clumps of galleries and moving between them can be difficult. It is easy to lose yourself down dusty streets, or find yourself on the wrong side of the Huantie railway track.

A favorite clump, therefore, is Three Shadows, Platform, CAAW and F2, who occupy neighboring courtyards, and share the benefit of Three Shadows’ café and peaceful photo library.

Another clump includes Chambers, ShanghART, Pékin Fine Arts and White Space and shows at the last two at least would amply reward an excursion this weekend.

Pékin Fine Arts is currently showing three photography exhibitions, stunningly installed by local architect Antonio Ochoa-Piccardo.

For one of these French artist Anais Martane traveled the country with journalist Diane Droin-Michaud to discover a mixture of the famous and the obscure to feature in a series of compelling portraits. Here we can see an anxious real-estate agent sweating on his next deal side by side with a proud chuan-r cook; rocker Cui Jian; and media baroness Hong Huang. Don’t neglect to read the accompanying texts (in Chinese on the walls and in English on hand-out sheets) which record the first person stories of the subjects.

In an adjacent gallery Head of the CAFA Photography Department Wang Chuan presents his masterly take on “8 Great Sites of Beijing”, using pixilation to create a seductive painterly surface that takes us below the obvious features of these famous scenes. Most fascinating of the three exhibitions, however, is Wassink and Lundgren’s “Empty Bottles”, a candid camera experiment which you should experience without further explanation, but is almost poetic in its evocation of our city where even an empty bottle can still be a thing of value.

White Space's current powerhouse show, on the other hand, features international stars like Damien Hirst and Anish Kapoor, with the local side represented by Liu Xiaodong and Zhang Xiaogang, amongst other stellar inclusions. All works have been chosen from the Domus Collection, the private collection of “an Asian-American collector residing both in New York and Beijing”, who apparently welcomes giving the public a glimpse of what he has.

If you are planning a trip to 798 this weekend, consider putting on your comfy shoes and flagging a cab at Dashanzi for Caochangdi. It’s only five minutes away, and it’s definitely worthy of a gallery crawl this Summer.