Saatchi causes a new online sensation in China

By Clifford Coonan in Beijing
Tuesday, 22 May 2007

Britain's Saatchi Gallery marked its latest expansion in China's booming contemporary art market yesterday with the launch of a Mandarin-language website, which will allow artists to display their work online and interact with their peers around the world.

The launch of a Chinese version of the Your Gallery website - the world's largest interactive art gallery with 20 million hits a day - shows how hot the Chinese art market is. Your Gallery was launched last year to provide a free global platform for artists.

There are more than 20,000 artists in China and a further 1,000 students graduate each year from art school, but English is not widely spoken, making international communication difficult, plus there are still no more than 200 contemporary art galleries to show their work.

Annabel Fallon, the spokesperson for Saatchi, said the global interest in Chinese contemporary art meant artists in China needed a platform from which to show their work and learn about contemporary art practice in other countries. Meg Maggio, the director of Pekin Fine Arts, said the chatroom function of the site was particularly important.

"This is a wonderful way to introduce Chinese artists to as many other artists and curators and students as possible around the world," said Ms Maggio.

Chinese artists will be able to post their profiles and have them translated into English."It's very exciting for us to be one of the first fully interactive sites on the Chinese internet," Charles Saatchi said at an official launch in the trendy Danshanzi art district of Beijing.Mr Saatchi was an early champion of young British artists such as Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, who have have a strong influence on China's rising stars.

An exhibition of avant-garde Chinese art at the Tate Liverpool features work by 18 artists, including Ai Weiwei and Zhuang Hui. And contemporary Chinese artists have set records at auctions in Hong Kong and New York.

Zhang Xiaogang's 1993 work, Tiananmen Square, sold for £1.2m at Christie's in Hong Kong in November, a record for the artist. Other names include Wang Guangyi, Yue Minjun, and Zeng Fanzhi. All are being wooed by galleries and collectors all over the world.