You can join Hu Fang and Zhang Wei, the amazing curators/directors of Vitamin Art Space, and Serpentine Gallery’s Hans Ulrich Obrist interview an array of contemporary Chinese artists such as Ai Weiwei and my personal favorite Cao Fei.

Obrist has as some of you know experimented with the interview form with an array of interlocutors and very interesting things often come out of them.

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Battery City: A Post-Olympic Beijing Mini Marathon is the continuation of Marathon events
conceived by Hans Ulrich Obrist which have been taking place at the Serpentine Gallery
Pavilions since 2006. Through interviews conducted by Hans Ulrich Obrist and group discussion
conducted by Jiang Jun, chief editor of Urban China, the Beijing Mini Marathon seeks to map the
most pressing concerns of the minds of Chinese artists, architects, writers, and intellectuals at this
moment, and to re-generate energy for future development within the Chinese context.

A publication will be produced of Battery City documenting the event’s interviews, discussions
and performances, results from a previous series of dialogues between Hans Ulrich Obrist and
Chinese artists, called Beijing Pavilion, as well as external contributions.

Hans Ulrich Obrist interviews: Ai Weiwei, Cao Fei, Zhang Anding, Xiao He, Zhang Da, Dai
Zhikang, Wang Jianwei, Jia Zhangke, Jiang Jun, Ma Yansong, Yangjiang Group, Zak Kyes, Yan
Jun.

Sound Performance: Yan Jun THE STETHOSCOPE
Calligraphy creation: Yangjiang Group (Zheng Guogu, Chen Zaiyan, Sun Qinglin)
Media Partner: Urban China Magazine
Translator: Venus
Stenography: Ruize Stenography Company
Supported by: Subjam, Zak Group

Time: 31 Dec 2008  2pm - 4am 1 Jan 2009

Venue: the shop Jianwai SOHO West Area Tower15 B1-1503

I can’t wait to see this!

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Banksy Unleashes ‘Mock Pet Supply’ Shop on New York City

Street artist/prankster Banksy has unveiled his latest installation — a mock pet supply store on seventh avenue near Bleecker Street in New York’s West Village.

In its windows, chicken nuggets dip themselves into sauce and a white rabbit wearing a pearl necklace files its nails in a mirror. There are also fishsticks swimming in a bowl (that look suspiciously like something else, I might add).

The NYT reports: “The Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill, as the green awning reads, is Banksy’s first official exhibition in New York, his representatives say, and it will be open to the public daily through Oct. 31. ‘Open for Pet Supplies/Rare Breeds/Mechanically retrieved meat’ says a sign in front of the shop. Bales of hay dot the sidewalk, along with a kiddie dolphin ride, wrapped in a fishing net like the day’s catch. But it is the leopard in one of the storefront windows that stops passers-by first. ‘Is that — real?’ a woman asked on Wednesday, peering at a large furry object perched on a tree branch, its tail swinging. It’s not: it is an ingeniously arranged fake fur coat. The robot monkey is more lifelike: it sits, breathing, in a cage inside the store, wearing headphones, holding a remote and watching a television clip of some fellow monkeys in an amorous moment.”

This is the first time Banksy has used animatronics. More at Wooster Collective.

Said Banksy in a statement: “I wanted to make art that questioned our relationship with animals and the ethics and sustainability of factory farming.”

Make SURE you check out the video, AFTER THE JUMP…

I shouldn’t be so bitter but I am. So I loved the whole concept of the Red/Auction at Sotheby’s last night. You can’t go wrong with the Global Fund. Neither can you with some of the hot works up for bid. Below are the ones I raised my paddle for but of course did not win.

Jake and Dinos Chapman, The dogs have grown up with the turkeys, 2007, oil on fibreglass, glass eyes on two panels, 94.5 x 96.5 x 3.9 in./240 x 245 x 10 cm. Courtesy of Sotheby’s.

Andreas Gursky, Pyongyang IV, 2007, C-print119.9 x 81.5 in./304.5 x 207 cm. Courtesy of Sotheby’s.

Yinka Shonibare, Un Ballo in Maschera - Courtiers VI (3 works), 2004, Life-size mannequins, glass base, dutch wax printed cotton textile and leather shoes, 77 x 21.9 x 17 in/195.6 x 55.6 x 43.2 cm. Courtesy of Sotheby’s.

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ART MARKET WATCH

Feb. 15, 2008 

Can Damien Hirst do no wrong? The charitable (Red) Auction the British artist spearheaded at Sotheby’s New York on Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14, 2008, totaled a beneficent $42,584,300 — including a buyer’s premium of 10 percent to cover administrative costs — with 82 of the 83 lots finding buyers. The total is well above the presale estimate of $21 million-$29 million. The sale set new auction records for 17 artists, including Marc Quinn ($605,000), Banksy ($1,870,000), Howard Hodgkin ($792,000), Keith Tyson ($440,000) and Bernar Venet ($297,000).The star-studded evening was launched by the musician Bono, who co-organized the sale, with an a capella rendition of All You Need Is Love. Among the celebrities in the room were Queen Noor, John McEnroe, Martha Stewart, Dennis Hopper, Michael Stipe, Ziyi Zhang, Ed Burns and Christy Turlington, who purchased Francesco Clemente’s Red Flower on Scorched Earth for $170,500, more than double the presale high estimate of $70,000. We like fashion models with art collections!

The sale’s top lot was Hirst’s Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way (2007), a slim pill cabinet of stainless steel filled with HIV antiretroviral drugs, which sold for $7,150,000, a hair above its presale high estimate. The buyer, according to the Baer Faxt, was White Cube, the London gallery that helped give Hirst his start.

Hirst contributed seven works to the sale, which all told sold for a spectacular $19,085,000. Five of the top ten were Hirst works. Hirst’s red dot painting, Bromphenol Red (2007), sold for $2,640,000 (est. $1,000,000-$1,500,000), and his red heart-shaped butterfly painting, All You Need Is Love, sold for $2,420,000 (est. $1,000,000-$1,500,000). The red Hirst spin painting, titled Beautiful Red Spin Painting (2007), went for $1,815,000.

According to the Baer Faxt, Bono was the buyer of three works — Matthew Barney’s sexy New Sun (2007), a photo of a female diver emerging from the water with a mouthful of pearls ($137,500); Robert Rauschenberg’s 1991 all-red painting of the Iodine Temple on a four-foot-square sheet of enameled aluminum ($220,000); and Sean Scully’s subtle Los Light 02.07 (2007) — done in tones of gray and blue, rather than red — for $715,000.

The remaining auction records were set for Peter Blake ($418,000), Rachel Howard ($132,000), Chéri Samba ($71,500), Malick Sidibe ($22,000), Seydou Keîta ($27,500), Georges Lilanga ($13,200), David Bailey ($63,800), Carsten Höller ($198,000), Michael Joo ($143,000), Tadao Ando ($110,000) and Gelitin ($18,700). The sale represented the first auction appearances for works by Howard, Joo, Ando and Gelitin.

Proceeds of the sale go to the United Nations Foundation to support HIV/AIDS relief programs in Africa conducted by The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.