Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Art journal #126: Selecting artworks

Fantastic day of AP Acq Committee meeting in London! Great briefing from curators on themes along which they structure their work - archive (Xu Zhen, Hao Bo), architectural power (Doho Suh, Haraguchi), staging the self (Cao Fei, Tim Lee, Fujiwara), globalisation and cultural transformation (An My Le, Huang Yong Ping), political and social interrogation (Propeller Group, Heri Dono, Paul Chan), experimental and spiritual interaction (Fujiko, Sugimoto).

Its really interesting to hear what artists they are following and building collections as 'anchors' - AWW, Kusama, Chen Zhen, and Tehching Hsieh. Clearly there's a steer away from 'pretty art' - there's big bias to conceptual works. Even for paintings, they prefer conceptual paintings like that from Liu Wei, Liu Ding. So in modern art, that would mean Lee Ufan, NJP, Takamatsu; and Japan avant garde like Yasumasa Morimura.

Interesting debate on which artworks to acquire - followed by voting. Glad to see the result! Unsurprisingly, very few 'auction artworks' up for discussion at all, given unrealistic prices!


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