The walls are white, the booths are near-identical, the VIP room is inaccessible, there are special passes, and even a talks programme. So far so predictable. The Well Fair, at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) in Beijing’s 798 art district, has all the trappings of a genuine international art fair. Only this exhibition, which occupies the whole of UCCA’s cavernous main hall, features work by just one pair of artists.
A VIP pass for The Well Fair. Image courtesy of William Zha’s Instagram
For their debut solo exhibition in Asia, the Danish-Norwegian duo Elmgreen & Dragset have staged a fake art fair, showing a selection of eighty of their works, in a setting that may wrong-foot many gallery-goers and collectors, more used to visiting bone-fide annual sales events such as Frieze and Art Basel.
Emergency Exit (2015) by Elmgreen & Dragset. As featured in The Well Fair
“As artists, we constantly hear critics, galleries and fellow artists complain about fair hysteria,” Michael Elmgreen told the Art Newspaper. “But everyone still participates in these events since it is a fact that you reach a much wider audience at a fair than in a gallery show. With The Well Fair, we have made the fair fit to our works instead of trying to make our works fit into the fair context.”
The Well Fair until 17th April UCCA Great Hall ucca.org.cn
Storaged (2015) by Elmgreen & Dragset. The Well Fair
