VIP Art Fair, the exclusive portal which offers its members direct links to some of the world’s A- list contemporary art galleries, has seen rapid growth over the past year, with up to 75,000 visitors from 91 countries accessing the site each week. As a result the fair will now launch VIP Art a permanent website offering contemporary art 365 days of the year.
Their next even, Vernissage (September 18th – October 7th) will be the first event of VIP Art, aggregating online, the in-gallery September exhibitions of its galleries, thereby allowing VIP’s collecting audience to take the pulse of the international contemporary art season from one centralized online location. Participating galleries, hailing from six continents, include Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac (Paris), Greenberg Van Doren Gallery (New York),Goodman Gallery (Cape Town and Johannesburg), Chemould Prescott Road (Mumbai), Anna Schwartz (Melbourne and Sydney), and Galeria Nara Roesler (S ão Paulo).
ZieherSmith (New York) will present Matthew Lusk’s More Broken Glass Than There Was Window. This large scale installation, Lusk’s first solo project, will convert the gallery’s space into an abandoned bank.Lawrie Shabibi (Dubai) has hand-selected a group of eleven emerging and mid-career artists from Pakistan for the upcoming show Play, Stop, Pause. This exhibition, both in the gallery and at VIP Vernissage, underscores the current international interest in contemporary art from Pakistan. Look. Ed!, the first exhibition of the season at Annet Gelink Gallery (Amsterdam), is an exhibition of work by Ed van der Elsken and curated by Jhim Lamoree. The photographs included in the exhibition were selected by Dutch photographers Rineke Dijkstra, Marlene Dumas, and Marijke van Warmerdam.
In response to this overwhelming visitor demand, VIP Art Fair is transforming to VIP Art (www.vipart.com). Changes include an always-accessible site, expanded calendar, and new collector’s tools. VIP Art has also introduced two additional time-based events: VIP Asia (October 21-November 4th), and VIP Editions (November 23-December 21st, 2012). A calendar of more events will be announced in the coming months.
Liz Parks, Fair Director of VIP Art, said: “VIP Art has evolved from hosting an annual fair to presenting a year-round calendar of art events in response to the needs of our galleries and collectors alike. The past year has consistently seen collectors coming to the website between fairs, unable to access content. With our new expansion, users will be able to enter the site 365 days per year and access displayed works and events from a wide yet vetted group of only top international galleries.”