The 2021 Beijing Contemporary Art Fair opened at the National Agriculture Exhibition Center in Beijing on October 13. As one of the key activities of the 9th Beijing Huimin Cultural Consumption Season, with the National Cultural Investment as the guiding unit, this year’s Beijing Contemporary Art Fair has presented an artistic scene for Beijing’s golden autumn.

Adhering to the principles of “curation”, “locality” and “publicity”, the Beijing Dangdai Art Fair focuses on Beijing, as the birthplace and gathering place of Chinese contemporary art, to deepen the profound artistic resources it contains, while focusing on more development and cooperation possibilities within an international perspective and a wide range of formats. The 2021 Beijing Dangdai Art Fair will be the largest one so far. More than 90 exhibitors will gather together the National Agricultural Exhibition Hall in the golden Autumn to present the rich appearance and active ecology of contemporary art and culture in an all-round and multi-dimensional way, create a rich cultural life scene for people in the city, and activate the vitality of local cultural consumption and the potential energy of art development. Jointly create and celebrate this “golden autumn of art, common festival”. The scene of this year’s Beijing Dangdai Art Fair is divided into six sectors: “VALUE”, “FUTURE”, “WONDER”, “DIGITALLATION”, “ENERGY” and “CO-TIME”, to comb and show the artistic ecology based on Beijing and China from different perspectives and aspects.

“VALUE” and “FUTURE” together build a top art scene
This year’s gallery sectors “VALUE” and “FUTURE” bring together 54 galleries from around the world to present a visual feast of modern and contemporary art with more than 8,000 works of art. Among the participating galleries, there are many stalwarts who have participated in the Beijing Dangdai Art Fair for four consecutive years, and 24 new faces who have made their debut at the Beijing Dangdai Art Fair. Different from the previous sessions, which divided the “value” and “future” units regionally, the participating galleries of “Value” and “future” this year will share the main exhibition hall of the fair, aiming to dilute the labels that define galleries by the time they were founded and the city in which they are located, hoping that all participating galleries will present their best in an equal and inclusive space. Internationally influential artists such as Yayoi Kusama, Kishio Suga, Kiki Smith, Henri Michaux and important Chinese contemporary artists, Works by artists such as Xu Bing, Zhang Xiaogang, Liu Xiaodong and Liu Wei are all listed.

BANK from Shanghai won the Best booth award at this year’s Beijing Dangdai Art Fair. BANK’s changes in the structure of traditional art fair booths and the selection of unified artists won unanimous recognition from the jury. BANK was also given a special incentive to waive booth fees at next year’s art fair. The judges for the Best Booth Award at this year’s Beijing Dangdai Art Fair include: Tang Xin, Head of Art Collection Department of Taikang Insurance Group and Director of Taikang Space; Philip Tinari, Director of UCCA Ulrens Center for Contemporary Art; Ye Ying, editor-in-chief of Art News/Chinese Edition; Wang Lin, Professor of Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, Visiting professor and doctoral supervisor of Xi ‘an Academy of Fine Arts; Wang Wei, Professor of Central Academy of Fine Arts and Zhang Zikang, Director of Central Academy of Fine Arts.

“WONDER” and “DIGITALLATION” explore new ways of viewing
The “WONDER” and “DIGITALLATION” sectors will move beyond the fair’s traditional ways of displaying and viewing artworks to explore new ways of viewing and engaging with artworks in different environments and emerging media.
The WONDER, which continues to focus on public art, presents 16 artists in the diverse public Spaces of the Agricultural Exhibition Hall: The works of Ai Jing, Gao Yanfa, Gao Yu, Hao Jingfang & Wang Lingjie, Huang Yiwei, Painting Society, Li Jinghu, Li Jingxiong, Liu Haigang, Liu Ke, Liu Shaodong, Newman Nuyata, Pu Yingwei, Xu Binjuyi, Xu Qu, Zhang Ning, the unique tension between the works and different environments brings the audience a new dimension and new experience of the works. This year’s new sector “DIGITALLATION” integrates digital technology and installation forms, focuses on the current flourishing science and technology aesthetics and science and technology art, and displays the unique art forms of the digital era at the scene of the art fair, so that a new generation of audiences with both science and technology and aesthetic literacy can experience the unique contemporary artistic innovation. Ren Dongsheng, a national first-class stage design designer, and Wang Zhiou, founder of BLACKBOW, as invited new media artists, created interactive installations with both immersion and performance based on the space environment of the art fair, exploring the possibility of technological and artistic renewal.

“ENERGY” and “CO-TIME” broaden the new boundaries of art
The ENERGY sector, which focuses on the aesthetics of life and trends, presents new forms and directions in which contemporary art can collide with other forms and industries. UCCA Store, subowie and Unknown Art show the unique charm of limited edition artworks. CHOCO1ATE Art Collection Space, FAS Fashion Art Space, Soap Studio and Modern Sky Vision creative label MVM, the leaders in the field of fashion games and IP development, will bring the most popular new games and IP derivatives. Allbirds, Sephora and TUPLUS Tuga teamed up with artists Qin Siyuan, Yang Maoyuan and Guo Hongwei respectively to demonstrate how art can empower brands and products. Baidu Encyclopedia Art Project and naive Ideal Country show how information and knowledge consumption can help spread art. LensforKids and an offline extension of the media property that was demonstrated on site. Baihui Hall creates the “Beijing Dangdai Living Room” public leisure space with good design.
The “CO-TIME” unit presents art derivatives and creative catering in the form of a “pop-up shop”, continuing the space design concept of “container” in the past few art fairs. The “time collection” unit of this art Fair is composed of eight groups of containerized Spaces, and its core is Li Han’s long-volume landscape work “Global Art Exhibition” in the “Expectation” unit.

As the international exchange partner of the Art Fair, the Beijing Diplomatic Service Bureau will also invite diplomatic envoys from various countries in Beijing to organize exhibitions and exchange activities of the fair named “Art China · Contemporary Beijing”, highlighting the city’s positioning as the center of Chinese cultural exchange, and the special status of the Beijing Dangdai Art Fair as a concentrated embodiment of the value of Chinese contemporary art. A series of public forums will also be held in the Forum room at the fair site from April 14 to 17, aiming to popularize and disseminate art knowledge and views to the public. Hot topics in the art world, such as the collection trend of the new generation of collectors, collection strategies in the post-epidemic era, the direction of fashion art, and the preservation of artworks, will be narrated and discussed at the scene.

Art Fair will continue to be positioned as a pioneering art fair based in Beijing, reflecting contemporary China, an art fair that tries to show the historical context and future trend of Chinese and international contemporary art, and in the continuous efforts to explore mode innovation and thinking innovation, in the spirit of integration and cooperation, the value of contemporary Chinese art will be organized internally and spread externally. To construct an integrated platform to promote the development of contemporary Chinese art.