Flash News: Huang Yong Ping – Artcurial – Luxembourg and contemporary art

Every fortnight, Artprice provides a short round up of art market news: Monumenta 2016: Huang Yong Ping’s challenge – Artcurial enters Hong Kong – Luxembourg and contemporary art

Monumenta 2016: Huang Yong Ping’s challenge
After the Kabakov couple, the French artist of Chinese origin HUANG Yongping has been chosen for the next edition of Monumenta, under the nave of the Grand Palais in Paris. We must wait one and a half years to see how the artist will choose to invest himself in the site, but it is certain that Huang Yong Ping shows a real talent for monumental works, as his long perennial snake skeleton sculpture installed in the Nantes estuary, whose aluminum structure measures 130 metres. While still largely unknown by the general public, the artist has benefited from a significant spotlight recently. Last year he had an exhibit at Carreau du Temple in Paris (for Nuit Blanche) and at the Lyon contemporary art museum (Amoy/Xiamen exhibit), while his huge Mue de serpent (Molting snake) in tulle treated with a resin, measuring 120 metres long caused a sensation in Nantes.
Born in 1954 in Xiamen in the People’s Republic of China, he’s lived in France since 1989, the year where he held an exhibit in Paris for Les Magiciens de la Terre (Earth Magicians) at Centre George Pompidou. Ten years later, he’s representing France with Jean-Pierre Bertrand in the 48th Venise Biennale. Thus a true international journey is unfolding, including the Gladstone gallery (New York, 2007 and 2009), the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (Beijing, 2008), the Palazzo Grassi in Venice (Le Monde vous appartient, or The World is Yours exhibit, 2011), etc.
On the auction market, his works have been included in contemporary art sales in Paris since 2000, in Hong Kong since 2002, and New York and London since 2006. At the heart of a dynamic market, his watercolours have already sold for between USD 15,000–40,000, and one should often expect to pay 10 times more for his sculptures and installations.

Artcurial enters Hong Kong
In the last dozen years, the former British colony has become an epicenter for the contemporary art market. Its free port, its policy more liberal than Beijing or Shanghai, its purchasing power among the highest on the Asian continent are some of the advantages for the development of auctions stimulated by the largest operators in the world.

We recall that Sotheby’s arrived in Hong Kong more than 40 years ago (opening of a branch in 1973) and that Christie’s organized its first sale there in 1986. Although their results were not impressive ten years ago, they are now significant, because the high-end market is doing well. In its international deployment strategy, the French auction house Artcurial is also entering Hong Kong, where it will hold a first sale in October 2015 (October 5 and 6). Titled From Paris to Hong Kong, this session will simultaneously present ancient, modern and contemporary Asian artwork, and will be organized in collaboration with the British auction house Spink.
Founded in 2002, Artcurial is the premier French auction house. It began pursuing an international development strategy in 2012, notably marked by the opening of offices in Belgium (Brussels), Italy (Milan), Austria (Vienna), and now Germany and China.

Luxembourg and contemporary art
Le Grand-Duché, as Luxembourg is known, does not have a huge contemporary art fair, like Basel, Paris, Brussels or Berlin, but it is livened up by some good galleries and wishes to develop its attractiveness in this area. For all that, without adding a new international fair to those already existing, the Cercle Artistic de Luxembourg (CAL) and the Luxembourg Agency for Cultural Action are collaborating under the aegis of gallery owner Alex Reding to launch the first Luxembourg Art Week, which will take place from 3–8 November 2015, or a few days after the closing of the Fiac. This first edition is modest in the number of exhibitors (twenty-some galleries, a dozen of which are international) without being in the area of dedicated exhibits (the 2,400 m2 of the Victor-Hugo hall). We wager that the galleries selected will make good use of this luxurious space…