ShanghART Opens New Gallery on Shanghai’s West Bund

ShanghART Shanghai +2 locations Follow +

ShanghART WB Central is further from the site of the West Bund Art & Design fair than ShanghART‘s previous West Bund gallery, but significantly closer to the Long Museum West Bund.

​​Designed by Hangzhou-based architects GOA Headquarters, the new gallery includes 500 square metres of activity space above ground and another 700 square metres underground.

The building is part of the 1.1 million square metre Shanghai West Bund Financial Hub, a mixed-use real estate development by Hongkong Land that cost U.S. $8 billion.

ShanghART founder Lorenz Helbling said the move was prompted by the end of their five-year lease at their previous West Bund location. They did some renovations to their alternate space in the M50 art district and held exhibitions there during a ‘very stressful few months’ while they looked for a new location.

‘We wanted, if at all possible, to keep the relationship to the WestBund,’ he said. ‘The Hongkong Land building is unique—a glass pavilion with a nice industrial underbelly—and it has a great location in the centre of a group of single story buildings in the middle of the very extensive Hong Kong Land Westbund development.’

‘The building has everything we need: enough space on 2 1/2 floors for exhibitions, meetings, talks, library, documentation, etcetera,’ he said.

Helbling described the space as ‘very different from our old‚ white cube exhibition space, presenting both challenges and possibilities.

ShanghART WB Central’s inaugural exhibition is a group show entitled In Harmony With The Way, (18 August–22 September 2024), which includes works by eight young artists, several of whom are showing with ShanghART for the first time.

Participating artists include painter and animator Liu Yi and Zhang Meng, who creates cosmic works in charcoal and pastel on wax paper.

Helbling described the exhibition as a ‘new reflection, new energy’.

ShanghART will continue to exhibit at their galleries in M50, Beijing, and Singapore. —[O]

Main image: ShanghART WB Central. Courtesy ShanghART.