Shanghai SERENADE
by Barbara Pollack



It’s a humid night in Shanghai, and I’m sitting in a private club with my host, Colin Chinnery, the new director of the ShContemporary art fair, Sept. 10-13, 2009, which brings 75 dealers from a dozen countries to the neo-classical Shanghai Exhibition Center. Chinnery is happily serving as translator in a conversation between Serpentine Gallery director Hans Ulrich Obrist and the Chinese conceptual artist Xu Zhen. Like many in China, Chinnery wears multiple hats. He’s also an artist who has just opened an installation at Pekin Fine Arts, a Beijing gallery that has a booth at ShContemporary.

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