When Tina Keng entered Taiwan’s art world three decades ago, her career — and the industry’s future — was far from assured.
“It was like a desert — so much uncertainty,” said Keng, 72, a veteran Taiwanese gallerist, as she stood in her namesake gallery in Taipei on a recent afternoon. She recalled how, in the 1980s, when she left her job in real estate sales to pursue a career in galleries, “the market was still very much dominated by Western art.”
She saw this clearly at an auction preview in Paris about three decades ago. There, she encountered a painting by Sanyu, a Chinese-born French painter, alongside works by Henri Matisse and Calude Monet. She was struck by how Sanyu’s work was just as impressive as the other artists’, but received little attention in Asia.
“I saw the potential of artists with Chinese linkages — both aesthetically and commercially,” Keng said, explaining her decision to collect and present artwork by Chinese-rooted artists like San and Zao Wou-Ki, a Chinese-born French painter known for his oil paintings. “I made up my mind to bring them to Asia since then.”
Now, she does exactly that, showing modern and contemporary paintings by artists of different generations at Tina Keng Gallery, an inviting space on the ground floor of a six-story building in a busy technology area in the city’s Neihu district. In the basement of the same building, the gallery’s sister brand, TKG+ — run by Keng’s daughter, Shelly Wu, 42 — displays immersive multimedia installations and experimental projects, many by local talents. With Keng’s gallery embracing classics rooted in Chinese heritage, and Wu’s looking to the future, the spaces are a study in contrasts.
And outside Taipei, Keng and Wu have transformed their galleries into driving forces in the international art market. They have showcased their collections at international fairs like Art Basel Hong Kong, and the Venice Biennale, supporting established names and emerging talents. And this month, Tina Keng Gallery and TKG+, along with nine other Taiwanese art galleries, will show their artists at Art Basel Hong Kong.
It’s a striking figure, but not surprising to Keng and Wu, who note that Taiwan offers a unique blend of strong collector support, rich cultural diversity and a climate of freedom and openness — the ideal ingredients for a strong art scene, which has nourished their work over the years.
Keng first started in the industry in 1989 with Dimensions Art Center, a company that specializes in art curation. Three years later, she co-founded Lin & Keng Gallery. She noted that in the early 1990s, more buyers in Taiwan were willing to pay for art as the economy thrived after the government lifted martial law in the late 1980s.
“It was a time when people started to make fortunes and buy fine art,” said Keng. “Taiwan’s art gallery industry also thrived rapidly during that time.”
In 2009, she founded Tina Keng Gallery amid the global financial crisis, and managed to survive with the support of loyal customers. The gallery briefly expanded to Beijing, where Keng hoped to reach more potential buyers, but she closed that branch in 2012 after discovering that the purchasing power of Chinese collectors did not meet her expectations.
“From a market perspective, the strength of Taiwanese buyers is second to none in Asia,” Keng said. “Chinese collectors are also far behind.”
Wu, an American-educated designer, founded TKG+ in 2009 when she was 27.
“My mom was definitely the main reason for me to join this industry,” Wu said. “I’ve been comfortably following her steps, but I also like new challenges.”
When Keng and Wu head to Art Basel Hong Kong, it will be their 13th consecutive time participating in the fair. They will be showing works by Yang Mao-lin, Yuan Hui-Li, Chen Ching-Yuan and nine others. They said that participating in this exhibition had become a regular part of their annual schedule. But what they hope is to see Taiwan to be the host of artists from around the world in the near future.
“The industry is different from when I first came 30 years ago, but I hope that one day Taiwan will not just be exhibitors at Art Basel, but will also be the host,” Keng said. —NYT
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