1st Asian Contemporary Art Fair in NY

Last night I attended the First Contemporary Asian Art Fair in NY.

It was on a bigger scale than the International Asian Art Fair NY in March but the quality I thought was inferior. Of course it is difficult to compare the two fairs as The International Asian Art Fair in March had more antique dealers than galleries which dealt with contemporary art.

However, this Fair did not have a great impact on me. Since this Fair concentrated on only Asian living artists or another word on only Asian contemporary art works I thought it would be more exciting than the western contemporary art show because of different cultural background. However to my disappointment that was not the case.

Most of the works were heavily influenced by contemporary western art and if there were no names of the artists on the works it would have been difficult to distinguish them from western contemporary art. Another words it looked as though they were done by western artists. I thought the works at this Fair would reflect Asian culture which in my opinion maintained spirituality in our culture than the western culture but I was wrong.

Many of the works displayed looked very familiar as they either copied the ideas or styles of well known contemporary western artists. My heart ached as so many Asian artists seemed to have lost their identity in this new era of globalization. It just seemed as though some of the Asian artists cut themselves off from their own culture but not quite grown roots in western culture.

However, this very first Asian Contemporary Art Fair in New York exhibited only a handful of Asian artists and it cannot be the whole Asian contemporary art scene.