Denis Belkevich, Managing Director of GAAB: “Being the fastest-growing contemporary art market in the World, Asian art market is expanding its borders by involving increasingly more countries from the region. In recent years Asia has brought out on the international art scene a number of talented young artists from South Korea, the Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam, India, Iran and many others. At the same time, contemporary Asian art has become more Western-focused. Asian art needed to be represented in Europe, as a central point between Hong-Kong and New York, and now this need is being realized in the GAAB project. We strongly believe that the rising number of European collectors will contribute towards the growth of the Asian art market”
Paul Gladston, Professor of Contemporary Visual Cultures and Critical Theory at the University of Nottingham and Director of the Academic Programme, WACAW: ‘Contemporary art related to Asian identities has become increasingly prominent on the international stage in recent years. Not only that from Japan, Korea, India and China, but also newly emerging artistic communities in central and south-east Asia, the Middle East and Asian diasporas world-wide. This growing, conspicuously diverse international profile poses significant questions for previously dominant western(ized) conceptions of contemporary art as well as differing ways in which ‘Asian’ contemporary art might be interpreted. Warsaw Asian Contemporary Art Week (WACAW) is a timely platform for exploring such questions. It will also give audiences opportunities to engage with art works rarely exhibited outside Asian cultural contexts’