Gallery Weekend Beijing Stakes the City’s Claim as China’s Art Capital

In the Dashanzi area in northeast Beijing, the 798 Art District is a hive of artistic and creative activity. First founded in 2002 on a cluster of former factory buildings, the district is now home to a sprawling network of galleries, institutions, studios, restaurants, and bars. Today, it is not just an arts hub, but a bona fide cultural destination that covers around 148 acres and typifies the city’s rapid urban renewal in the last few decades.

“People visiting Beijing come to 798, it’s a tourist spot,” said Guio Dandan of HdM Gallery, one of almost 200 galleries in the district. The gallery’s airy, natural light–filled space—renovated last December to celebrate its 15th anniversary—is a highlight of Gallery Weekend Beijing, where the 798 District is a key geographic nucleus.

Running through June 2nd and featuring nearly 40 gallery and nonprofit participants, this year marks the eighth Gallery Weekend Beijing, and the first since the wholesale return of international travel. To many, China’s international art scene is centered around Shanghai, which has seen prolific growth in the 21st century. But Beijing has a huge significance within China: As the country’s capital, it has a large sway in the cultural conversation. At this year’s event, participating galleries made the most of this dialogue.

“After we reopened last year, I think it’s also the time for the international audience to see what the new status of the contemporary art of China is and also what young Chinese artists are doing,” said Evonne Jiawei Yuan, the curator of a special group show, “The inner side of the wind.” The show features works by artists working with galleries across the weekend, such as Joey Xia, Hu Weiyi, and Jiang Miao.

Organized around the theme “Drift to Return,” this edition of Gallery Weekend Beijing examines the balance between international and local exchange, as well as the “integration and communication of cultural currents.” Taken as a sum total, the presentations across the weekend from institutions and galleries weave together domestic and global perspectives, through predominant themes of climate and technology.

One of the clearest demonstrations of this theme is at Tang Contemporary Art, which, in a group show across its two branches in the 798 Art District, includes all the artists that the gallery has worked with throughout its 28-year history. Visitors are greeted by the sound of chirping birds, which in fact turn out to be real songbirds, held in two vast, intricately constructed bamboo towers. The work, Rirkrit Tiravanija’s Untitled (2010), is among the highlights of a show that also features an effervescent 2015 self-portrait by Li Luming and three-meter lacquered bamboo wings created by Huang Yongping. Both a comprehensive survey of the gallery’s history and an introductory glance at Tang’s program, the show highlights the architecture of the gallery spaces, which, like many of those in the district, are cavernous in size, allowing for more curatorial experimentation. “A lot of now-well-known contemporary artists, when they were beginning, as young artists, we’ve [given them the] spaces for them to do installations,” said assistant curator Shiying Wang.

A little further down the road, Galleria Continua’s similarly capacious space, which it has operated since 2005, is handed over to Qiu Zhijie, whose standout solo exhibition “Eco-Lab” is a dizzying, head-first performance-installation exploring the biosphere, lithosphere, atmosphere, and geospheres. In a collection of works that take the term “mixed media” to its fullest extent, stones weather in real time, a gaggle of living mealworms feast on some polystyrene, and seawater evaporates into salt in an eye-opening—and occasionally nose-tingling—display.

At Gallery Weekend Beijing’s visiting sector, meanwhile, eight international names are housed over four stories in an industrial building. Many of these names have been fostering a Beijing clientele for some time, such as Galerie Chantal Crousel. The Paris-founded gallery is dedicating its exhibition to Oscar Tuazon, whose pensive steel, concrete, and wood sculptures, and works on paper in pigment, explore the relationship of water to the natural world. Participation, said gallery director Wan Wang, is an important touchpoint for the gallery to engage with the local market: “We feel like it’s very important to bring exhibitions and programs to the audience, people, and clients here in order to let them know what we’re doing,” she said.

Almine Rech, which runs a Shanghai gallery and is participating in the section with a two-person show of Jean-Baptiste Bernadet and Alejandro Cardenas, is taking a similar approach. The clientele is “very different” in Beijing compared to Shanghai, noted Meng Yu, an associate at the gallery, who described the local market as “very strong.”

In fact, many galleries noticed the presence of new collectors in Beijing, with second-generation wealth becoming more evident in the market. At Ink Studio, which focuses on Chinese experimental ink art, director Craig Yee pointed to an influx of younger buyers. “Today, there is a groundswell of interest amongst young Chinese collectors who are finding in contemporary ink a contemporary expression of their Chinese cultural identity,” he said, while noting that the global Chinese diaspora is also engaging with the medium.

While the full return of international art fairs ART021 and Westbund in Shanghai last year may have shone attention on the Chinese second city’s re-entry into the international art world, Beijing’s gallery scene has also been ramping up, with its gallery weekend putting a spotlight on what is prominent year-round: the range of the city’s exhibitions. The cities complement, rather than compete with each other, explained Ink Studio’s Yee.

“If you are interested in the Chinese market for global contemporary then Shanghai is, hands down, the city to watch,” he said. “But if you want to [know] what is happening at the interface between contemporary Chinese art and contemporary Chinese society, then Beijing and its galleries is still the city to watch.”

His gallery is located a short hop away from 798 in the Caochangdi Art District, one of four other areas across the city with programming for Gallery Weekend Beijinh. In the Central Business District, Espace Louis Vuitton presents a solo show of works by Albert Oehlen, while in design district 751D-PARK, the A26 Space Cafe hosts a solo show of works on paper by young Zimbabwean artist Brett Charles Seiler. Elsewhere, Lisson Gallery and White Space are located across the city in the Blanc Art District. There, near the city’s airport and within the Tianzhu Free Trade Zone, where companies benefit from special import, export, and trade policies, other galleries, such as Woaw and MASSIMODECARLO, have also set up shop.

For Beijing Gallery Weekend, Lisson is showing two solo shows: one by British artist Christopher Le Brun; the other by Chinese painter Zhao Gang, whose surreal works depict hunks of raw meat, T.S. Eliot, and still-life arrangements. The gallery has run a Shanghai outpost since 2019 and inaugurated its Beijing space with an Anish Kapoor show in 2022. Beijing had reached “a critical mass that we felt was really an opportunity to come in,” said the gallery’s director David Tung. “There’s a lot of artists here and a lot of good institutions,” he added. “People are very curious to see what’s happening, or what has happened.”