Talking To: Massimo Torrigiani
After a half decade run, SH Contemporary’s ups and downs have been well-publicised. In 2007, the fair rode the coattails of the booming Asian contemporary art scene to a successful first year, but the global economic crisis stifled the sophomore effort. Plagued by bad luck and high turnover, SH Contemporary has lived on a rollercoaster for the past five years, but Massimo Torrigiani, the fair’s new director, has come all the way from Milan to change the fair’s trajectory with the 2011 SH Contemporary.
Unlike his predecessors, Massimo Torrigiani’s art expertise stems from the media side of the art world, and Asian art was not his forte. The co-founder of Boiler Corporation, an independent publishing house in Milan, Torrigiani most recently launched Fantom – Photographic Quarterly. So he tackled the due diligence for the position using his background to help him.
“After attending the [2010 SH Contemporary], I stayed in Shangahi for two weeks, approaching the project in the only way I know I can: as if I had to write a long extended article in The New Yorker about the Shanghai and Chinese art scene,” he says. “I met artists, curators, gallerists, the media, collectors, to understand whether the potential that I immediately recognised both in the project and in Shanghai actually made sense. And it did.”
Torrigiani accepted the job, but not before asking for total carte blanche in reinventing the fair. He had been surprised by the poor showing amongst some of the region’s leading galleries and quickly determined that wooing them back to the fair would be his first priority.
With that goal in mind, he stripped the idea for the Contemporary down and built it back up to reflect his vision, one that he believed would speak for itself in bringing the top galleries and artists back in to the fold.
“The idea is to showcase the best, most exciting and interesting art which is being produced here in China and Asia right now. I didn’t want to have yet another collective temporary pop-up store for international galleries to come and sell international art,” he says, “The other option is to become the platform, the collector, the amplifier for the energies that are running through the place where the fair actually happens. For me, it’s important that the fair reaches out to the city and absorbs the city.”
Developing a strategy that utilises Shanghai as an asset to the event, Torrigiani and his team contacted the city’s entire art industry, building partnerships with everyone from museums and institutions to local galleries and alternative spaces. One of the results of this networking is the Private Art Museum Alliance. The fair will host a convention of 28 Chinese contemporary art museums that will run a lounge presenting their activities at the event.
With most of the big names back on board, Torrigiani moved on to his second priority: finding the new artists and galleries. To inject fresh blood into the mix, he offered smaller spaces at discounted rates to young galleries. He also launched a new photography section, including the first edition of the Asia Pacific Photography Prize. Because of its utility in so many other creative fields, Torrigiani considers photography an important medium to reach would-be collectors, a gateway drug into the contemporary art world.
To further foster a new generation of art lovers, the Collectors’ Development Programme will be in full force, offering guided tours, parties and private viewings. Collecting novices can brush elbows with the scene’s VIPs at the Collector’s Dinner.
Whether or not Torrigiani has been able to capture the energy of Shanghai in the three-day event remains to be seen, but the project’s design is full of the promise of a good time. And there’s nothing more Shanghai than that.
8-10 September. Shanghai Exhibition Centre. 1000 Yan’an Lu, near Tongren Lu. Web: www.shcontemporary.info
