Operating in three spaces across New York and Beijing, for the past two decades Chambers Fine Art has presented a range of contemporary Chinese artistic practices, contributing to the visibility and popularity of avant-garde Chinese art world-wide.
Read MoreFounded by Christophe W. Mao in New York in 2000, Chambers Fine Art was named after Sir William Chambers: a late-18th-century British architect who was passionate about Chinese principles in garden design. The gallery opened its Beijing space in 2007 in the city’s Caochangdi arts district.
Designed by Ai Weiwei, Chambers Fine Art’s 8,000-square-foot Beijing space is located in the Red Brick Art Galleries. One enters the gallery space through a courtyard, where outdoor sculpture is regularly on display. The location is comprised of three gallery spaces, including a smaller space utilised for video and installation work.
Chambers Fine Art expanded once again upon the completion of its Artfarm space in 2008. Comprised of a storage facility, offices, and a gallery, the upstate New York space acts as an annex to the gallery’s main locations, as well as as a repository for the founder’s archive and collection.
In 2019 Chambers Fine Art moved its New York space from its Chelsea location to an appointment-only viewing room in Greenwich Village, where it will be based until its new full gallery space opens on the Lower East Side in 2020. In the meantime, the public can find a range of high-quality artworks at its Beijing and Artfarm spaces.
Supporting Chinese artists’ careers in the United States from the very beginning of its programme, within its first decade Chambers Fine Art had hosted the first American solo exhibitions of artists such as Song Dong and Lu Shengzhong. In the gallery’s second decade a selection of artists who are a part of the younger generation of Chinese art were added to the roster, including Guo Hongwei, Zhao Zhao, and Wu Jian’an.
When Chambers Fine Art was founded, Chinese art and artists were still a rarity on the international contemporary art scene. Now entering its third decade and satisfied with the popularity of Chinese art world-wide—a reputation it certainly contributed to—the gallery is beginning to look towards expanding its scope, adding the next generation of artists from around the world to its roster.
Chambers Fine Art’s main exhibition spaces in Beijing and New York are known to host a range of innovative exhibitions throughout the year, while the Artfarm is usually reserved for the exhibition of works from the founder’s collection and the gallery’s general inventory. However, since 2009 the space has occasionally hosted thematic exhibitions, including Song Dong & Rong Rong (16 June–15 August 2009): the pair show that inaugurated this feature.
Chambers Fine Art regularly attends a range of prestigious art fairs, including but not limited to Taipei Dangdai; UNTITLED, ART San Francisco; EXPO CHICAGO; Art Chengdu; Art Basel in Hong Kong; West Bund Art & Design, Shanghai; Abu Dhabi Art; ART021 Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair; PHOTOFAIRS | Shanghai; Art Beijing.
Ocula Magazine 's editors select their picks from Asia Now's online Viewing Rooms, presented on Ocula until 7 November.
The Ocula team present picks from Taipei Connections, an online platform launched by Ocula and Taipei Dangdai.
With galleries closed around the globe, the virtual rooms are a unique space to share art works online.
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If it wasn't for the film Blow-Up, Pixy Liao may never have become a photographer. Working as a graphic designer in Shanghai and deeply dissatisfied with the lack of creative control she had over her own work, after watching Michelangelo Antonioni's cult classic about a fashion photographer loosely based on David Bailey, she was inspired to make...
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A prominent member of the post-1980s generation of Chinese artists and a former assistant of Ai Wewei, the Beijing artist talks about his visually stunning, anti-authoritarian and provocative work. Lilly Wei talked to the artist in his Beijing studio in 2015
