Shanghai Art Week defies slowdown with six-figure sales

Thaddaeus Ropac sold Megan Rooney's painting That Sky (Atlas) (2026) for £400,000 on the opening day of West Bund Art & Design this week, one of several six-figure transactions reported across Shanghai's two flagship fairs despite a Chinese art market that one dealer calls "at an all-time low."

The 13th edition of West Bund Art & Design (10–15 November) gathered 85 galleries, among them Hauser & Wirth, Perrotin, Thaddaeus Ropac and White Cube. The 14th edition of Art021, running at the Shanghai Exhibition Centre with 111 galleries, launched a new acquisition initiative with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Lacma), supported by Chinese collectors and aimed at bringing works by Asian and Asian diaspora artists into the museum's collection.

Both fairs opened against slowing economic growth, subdued market confidence and an increasingly crowded international art calendar. The city, dealers concede, no longer commands the international draw it held before the pandemic. Yet committed buyers remain active — they are simply slower to commit to expensive works.

Who is still buying?

"I think the serious people who have a long-term idea of what they want to do, they keep collecting," says René Meile, director of Galerie Urs Meile, which operates a Beijing location. He attributes the longer deliberation times partly to the departure of speculative buyers, and notes that younger collectors increasingly favour artists of their own generation.

At West Bund, Thaddaeus Ropac's opening-day sales beyond the Rooney canvas included:

• A Martha Jungwirth painting for €200,000
• A Robert Longo work for $90,000
• A Han Bing painting for €55,000, acquired by an Asian museum
• A Joan Snyder work sold to a Chinese museum

Dawn Zhu, the gallery's Asia director, says: "We are seeing collectors who have travelled from across South East Asia and even a few from Europe."

Hauser & Wirth reports its own significant results, led by Louise Bourgeois's bronze sculpture Point of Contact (1967–68, cast 2006), sold for $450,000 to a museum in Kuala Lumpur. Further transactions include:

• Lee Bul's Perdu XXXIII (2020), sold for $260,000 to a private collection in China
• Bourgeois's Femme (2008), acquired by a Chinese private collector for $165,000
• George Condo's Black and Red Composition (2026) for $200,000

At Art021, Galerie Urs Meile sold works by Xie Nanxing for approximately RMB 1.2m and by Ju Ting for RMB 400,000, alongside pieces by younger artists Chen Zuo and Miao Miao priced between RMB 100,000 and RMB 150,000, and a smaller painting by Vietnamese artist Mai Ta for RMB 40,000. Shanghai-based gallery Bank reports strong early sales of Liang Hao's works, priced RMB 60,000 to 300,000, and a large Jiang Cheng painting for over RMB 500,000. Bank also says Lacma may acquire a video work made in 2000 by Los Angeles-based artist Patty Chang — a "may", notably, not a completed deal.

Three new galleries in one week

The week's expansion is not confined to the fairs. Three new gallery spaces opened across the city:

• Hangzhou's Inna Art Space opened Inna Front Room in the Lujiazui business district — the first significant gallery on the Pudong side of the river.
• Chen Yongwei, former director of the nonprofit Pond Society, opened Shanghai Industry atop the Suhe House art cluster.
• Taipei's PTT Space opened an outpost at the M50 gallery complex.

"Even though the Chinese market is at an all-time low, Shanghai is still a vibrant international city with many art institutions," says Robert Hsu, who founded PTT in 2020. "Considering the past art week, the number of openings parties and fairs is still through the roof, surpassing Seoul Art Week and coming close to Hong Kong Art Week."

Hsu cites existing "base infrastructure" — staff and relationships with local artists and collectors — as a reason for the move. "As a second generation gallerist, I feel we have to keep moving in this new era. The market, the business, the people have all changed. To survive, I have to step out of our comfort zone and explore."

The fair calendar itself is thickening. Hsu is part of the team organising the new boutique fair Art Fusion Canton in Guangzhou (3–7 December). In Shanghai, the pop-up fair Hang Over (11–15 November) runs its second edition with 18 galleries, having moved from last year's restaurant to an event space in a new lifestyle complex on Donghu Lu; participants include Tokyo's Misako & Rosen, Seoul's Cylinder, and Shanghai's Antenna Space, Vanguard and Linseed, the latter owned by Hang Over founder Zhuang Lingzhi.

What does the slowdown change for Shanghai?

Perrotin, which has operated a Shanghai space since 2018, argues the shift cuts both ways. Liang Xiao, a gallery spokesperson, says the slowdown has given collectors more time to select works they genuinely appreciate. New fairs in Yokohama, Seoul and elsewhere, he suggests, will not fundamentally undermine Shanghai's position given the size of China's domestic collector base. "Even after all these years, there are still many collectors we have yet to reach," Liang says, adding that Shanghai remains an important entry point for collectors across mainland China.

Hsu strikes a similar balance. Feedback for PTT Shanghai's debut week has been "quite positive," he says, but "the market is not at its best." Transactions have been slow, though the gallery placed some works with established collectors. "As the old saying goes, the gallery business is a marathon, not a sprint."

The sales figures at both fairs suggest the marathon has runners left; how many speculative ones return is the question no dealer in Shanghai can yet answer.