ABC Art Book Fair

From September 4 to 6, the fifth ABC (art book in China) Art Book Exhibition (hereinafter referred to as "ABC book fair") was held in Shanghai. During the three-day exhibition, 139 local exhibitors, including art book institutions, magazines, bookstores, distributors, 16 international publishing institutions entrusted to exhibit, and international art book exhibition boards supported by the Dutch Embassy in China, the Swedish Embassy in China and the Swiss cultural foundation, brought together over thousands of excellent art publications. The interesting publication creation has attracted cultural and art lovers from all over the country. Waves of well-dressed and personalized young people rush into every corner of the sunken square where the exhibition hall is located.

The fifth ABC art book fair. Photo by Liang

Against the wind

The origin of "art book" can be traced back to the 1960s. Due to the lack of resources and financial resources for holding exhibitions, artists at that time had to choose to print art books in small quantities to express their ideas and thoughts, which was called "artist book". After entering the millennium, the Internet era has brought "fire" to electronic reading, and the traditional publishing, which is well known to the public, is gradually declining. In recent years, more and more attention has been paid by the market to the unexpected "out of circle" operation of art books. Many flexible and small number of art books are willing to produce rare art books in the market for full artistic expression, regardless of the cost. There are always interesting and experimental high-quality works. This huge contrast shows the vigorous vitality of the wild growth of art books.

Art books are up against the wind. Photo by Liang

In an interview with 21st century economic reporter, Zhao mengsha, co-founder of ABC, said that five years ago, there was no art book fair of its own in China. Therefore, with a pioneering courage, the team decided to launch the first ABC Art Book Fair in 2015 with art books as the media, providing a centralized display platform and exchange opportunities for similar works.

From the first exhibition to the fifth one this year, ABC curatorial team not only pays attention to the basic booth sales, but also enriches the connotation and extension of art book fair. In addition to the sale of publications, the first ABC book fair arranged four artists' lectures, four dialogues and a special exhibition of artists' handmade books; in 2016 and 2017, the book fair focused on increasing the proportion of public education content, but also set up book production and printing workshops to increase the interactive experience of the audience; in 2018, the number of special exhibitions and projects doubled. "ABC Book Fair is different from other art fairs. Its purpose is more than trading. I hope that ABC Book Fair will give you a feeling of a festival about art and books, rather than giving people a sense of distance from other contemporary art exhibitions," Zhou Yue, founder of ABC, told reporters in an interview

Strengthen the function of "hematopoiesis" and enrich the wings

According to the data, New York art book fair, the largest art book fair in the world, can bring more visitors to MoMA PS1 Art Museum than it receives in one year of its daily operation. Therefore, the New York Book Fair in the later stage returned to the operating capital through the annual growth of booth fee income and the first day preview ticket income. Born out of the same business model, ABC book fair began to sell tickets from 2018, and at the same time, it screened the audience more accurately. Judging from the grand event of the Super Long March, the group of young people who love art books is much larger than expected.

How can the ticket revenue of each session be invested into the book fair sustainably? Zhou Yue told reporters that the ABC Book Fair is held twice a year for only three days. With the two months of preparation, only half of the time is spent preparing for the book fair every year. However, with the increasing influence of ABC book fair, the team decided to change its position from "organizer" to "institution dedicated to promoting Chinese local art books for a long time". Therefore, in the half year of the inactive period, they will take the initiative to purchase or collect and archive the art books voluntarily donated by each exhibitor, establish the ABCA Art Literature Library, do podcasts and compile magazines. This year, they also set up the selection of art book awards to record, narrate and encourage the emerging art creation forces in China in a non-profit way, so as to continuously add new ideas to the overall ecology of the art book market The jigsaw puzzle. "After three days of activity in the book fair, we still hope to calm down to do some practical expansion and research work." "Although a lot of work may not be as effective and profitable as a Book Fair, it needs us to do, and it has a longer-term significance," Zhou said

Do not talk about "minority interest", present the multifaceted nature of reading and life

Whether artists, designers or individual creators, they all have a consensus in their hearts: art books are not promoting a "minority interest" opposite to "public interest", but to present the multifaceted nature of reading and life, so it is more like a complement to the existing system. Judging from the exhibition situation this year, in addition to a number of publishing houses from home and abroad, there are also cultural space such as fruitypress, magazine brandd, bookstore lanree, LAN Rui foreign language, Beijing intermediate Art Museum, fake magazine and other institutions, music brand Qiqi audio-visual and other art creation individuals and groups to participate in it, bringing rich and diverse minority art and cultural products, showing one light after another Strange and lively small world.

A project from Beijing mainly focuses on the decomposition process of thinking, and the resulting publications are no longer a single function of displaying the completed results, but more on displaying the works and the repetitive details behind them. In this book exhibition, they brought a book "C-site" folded like a fan. It is intended to be completed in the form of ten artists asking questions spontaneously and then asking questions to the next one after answering them, so as to present the state of dialogue in a natural and autonomous state.

Volume press is a publishing studio in Shanghai, and most art book readers have heard of their lost series about travel and self discovery. This year, in addition to the latest issue of "lost", there is also the first issue of the new series "draw". Nelson, the manager, said that "draw" is a magazine with the theme of creativity and lifestyle stories inspired by the sea. The initial idea of the new series is to believe that the sea can stimulate imagination and take us to unknown places; and human thought has infinite power, just like the boundless ocean.

Who says art publishing is limited to paper creation? Earth good garments, a design brand from Guangzhou, has drawn a series of seemingly casual pop or post pop illustrations on the T-shirt in a unique way, expressing the ordinary earthlings' observation and thinking about life and the world. Mr. Chen, the owner of the stall, revealed that the main creators of the brands are the post-80s and 90s generation. The design inspiration mainly comes from various European, American and Japanese cartoons, books and records when he was a child. He told reporters: "it was unthinkable 10 or even five years ago that more artists born in the 1990s and after 00 had the opportunity to contact or even participate in art books during their study period. In recent years, the boom of art exhibitions such as ABC Book Fair has broadened the horizons of more young artists, and has an intuitive contact with the market industry while being recognized. "

Ola Johansson, cultural counsellor of the Swedish Embassy in China, sat in the booth of the Swedish art magazine OEI with a smile, watching the young Chinese people who were coming and going from the scene to look at several large volumes on the table curiously at his booth. Different from the scholars or performing artists of Beijing Dance Academy, he was very happy to see that Chinese young people are also willing to understand aesthetics at the ABC book fair. Due to travel restrictions, he brought this interesting book on behalf of the editor of OEI, a local poetry publication in Sweden, and received a lot of enthusiastic inquiries at the scene. "Being a cultural counsellor means that my every move in the cultural field represents the exchange between Sweden and China, and literary publications are one of the areas of communication," he told reporters. ABC book fair not only provides us with the opportunity to display our own culture, but also provides us with the opportunity to establish contact with people in the publishing industry, especially in the art publishing industry. "

The book from the middle of the book is like a butterfly. It has been flying from scratch for five years - from outside the mainstream market to within the public's vision - shining with independent light, flying to the next five years.