Taipei hotel art fair opens to public with display of 3,000-plus pieces

Taipei, Jan. 18 (CNA) One Art Taipei 2020, an exhibition that is usually held in a city hotel, opened to the public Saturday with a display of more than 3,000 contemporary art works from across Asia.

The art fair, spread over three floors at The Sherwood Taipei, featured works by artists from Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong and from 67 galleries from across Asia.

One of the displays that attracted the most attention was a series of 12 contemporary pieces by 24-year-old Austrian artist Alessandro Painsi, which were on loan from the Be Fine Art Gallery in Taipei and were displayed in an empty hotel room.

"We had an idea to build a room inside a room, because hotel rooms are always neat and perfect, but I wanted to create something that was really rough and raw," Painsi said. "I wanted it to remind me of my studio and my work, which is very rough."

One of the more eye-catching pieces by Painsi was his "Head of Lucifer" painting.

"At the first moment, it is very chaotic and there is a lot going on," said Anne-Marie Avramut, Painsi's curator and agent. "You see different textiles cut out and glued and sewn together by hand. You see big splashes of oil paint, writing in oil stick, and very powerful and big gestures of brush strokes."

What looks like chaos, however, is the core concept of the universe, she said.

It is "the concept of duality, which is reflected through Lucifer, who, in European mythology, is the one concept that incorporates both darkness and light, together," Avramut said. "It is like the Asian principle of Yin and Yang."

This year is the second edition of the hotel art fair, which got off to a strong start in 2019 with the sale of some 800 pieces, according to Rick Wang (王瑞棋), director of One Art Taipei 2020.

"I'm definitely sure that the numbers are going to increase this year, judging from the delivery notices that we have received so far," he said.

One Art Taipei 2020, which kicked off Friday for art collectors and VIPs, opened to the general public Saturday and will run until Sunday.