Tuesday, September 4, 2012


VIP Art Fair announces its transformation into VIP Art

VIP Art Fair, a portal to the world's premiere contemporary art galleries, has seen rapid growth over the past year, with visitors from 91 countries (155 during events) accessing the site each week. VIP Art Fair has an established list of 75,000 registrants from 155 countries, and has seen an increase in visits from key emerging markets: 278% from India, 288% from UAE, 277% from Brazil, 409% from Turkey, 319% from Mexico, and 456% from Chile.

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.

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."

VIP Art will allow galleries to present a rotating selection of inventory and new work by stable artists, thus paralleling and supplementing their gallery programs. In addition, VIP Art will continue to host ongoing high impact events for which it is known. To celebrate of the expanded site, VIP 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.

VIP Art has 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.

Complementing VIP Art's expansion, Collector's Tools will continue to be at the fingertips of the collectors who visit the site allowing them to: like an artwork, follow artists and galleries, and share tours with friends and colleagues. VIP Discussions will also continue bringing educational films to VIP Art's users, exploring the fine art world through the eyes of recognized tastemakers and sharing the opinions of industry professionals.

Severin Andrieu-Delille, VP of Product & Engineering, said: "With VIP Art we wanted to further simplify and open up the experience to allow visitors to really use the tools we built for them without hassle. A lot of the site is now accessible without registration. We optimized the platform for mobile devices, improved the viewing experience on all screen sizes using responsive layouts, improved the management tool for our galleries and enhanced the browsing and searching experience. We intend to keep rolling out exciting new features in the weeks ahead."

In celebration of this expansion, VIP Art is hosting an event at James Cohan Gallery on September 18th from 6-8pm. On view will be the gallery's first exhibit of work by Jesper Just - a video installation This Nameless Spectacle

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