Well, here we are, Hearts & Together (awww) – a blend of exhibitors from various countries trying our best to promote our artists and be cooperative. The atmosphere is friendly, although the energy was higher this morning thanks to swarms of local arts college students –  they were well suited to the ARTERI booth and really got involved taking a look at the Suitcase of Stuff exhibit. This morning has definitely gotten me excited for the weekend. But back to right now. The international exhibitors seem to make up more than half the total here, and right now it’s quiet – a good time to take a closer look at some of them.

Simon Soon and I spoke with reps from galleries in Spain, India, Taiwan, Japan, and China, all exhibiting here, some for the first time, some re-visiting. And there’s a whole Korea-ville, some sort of joint booth, where the concepts overall are a little too sweet. But then again we came out of there with the title of this post – Hearts & Together is part of what Korean artist Lee Sang-Gill calls his series of works, here on display.

From Europe unfortunately there is only Spain and Hungary, and the Hungarian is selling one type of art only – his own. The Spanish – ATR Gallery – are from Madrid. Having exhibited at Art Expo 3 times (!) already, they are familiar with the demographic of visitors but were pleased to report that early attendance is up from the last two fairs, where people only come over starting on the weekend. ATR told us they are hoping to eventually bring contemporary Asian works to the scene back home. From India there’s also only two galleries, Samanvai Art Gallery and Janus Art Gallery. We can only hope that at future Art Expo Malaysias we’ll see more from there. From China, Sichuan Province, artist Song Wei (represented by Singaporean Mad Museum of Art & Design by Jasmine Fine Art) has three oils on canvas, a highlight being his ceramic Mini Cooper! In the Art Expo catalogue, the ceramic motorbike looks great too.

Song Wei, ‘Daydream – Mini Cooper’, 2007.

Unfortunately the artist will not be visiting the Expo. Another Chinese artist is here though, Chen WenHua from Yunnan Province has some slightly clumsy but really interesting paintings that reproduce beautifully – which probably explains why they’re selling his postcards and even t-shirts here at the Expo! It’s so great to meet international artists through this event, standing right by their work.

Noda Contemporary from Japan, are showing a group of works that are noticably super-clean. We loved the sibling canvases of Yu Hara, which show modern civilization in a swirl of mobile phones, road signs and electric razors. The accompanying text says ‘Looked upon from a higher point of view, the world is a series of communications…’, a nice note to check out on for now, because this is only one short post in our series of communications from AEM 2009. hehehe, bye!

(SW)