Tag Archives: art fair

Geisai Taipei 3 Art Fair Registration Open! 12/4/2011

Geisai Taipei is one of the big chances for independent artists and crafters to get noticed by the Asian art market, including galleries, curators, organizations, magazines and other organizations. One the one hand, with hundreds of artists competing for a handful of recognition awards, the chances of self-representing artists getting “discovered” and represented are slim to none – but on the other hand, that tiny chance of getting your art in front of industry leaders is enough, for most of us, to dish out the US$ 234 for a little booth (W 180X D 180X H 240cm) at this one day art fair event.

Plus, the growing popularity of Geisai and the large community of Taipei art connoisseurs means that, if well-utilized, Geisei can be a great opportunity to grow your fan base and increase your exposure – and maybe even to connect with some interested buyers.

Successful art fair presentation

Although I joined Geisei 2 last year, I didn’t know what I was getting into and presented very, very poorly. With just one little booth, I figured I better cram in as many paintings as possible, stacking them up on top of each other, and stuffing each little corner with personal oddities, fliers, news-scraps… I even had an electronic talking fish and a wooden Buddha statue to try and give my booth some style and color. BAD IDEA. You don’t want to present your art like 2nd hand knock-offs at a flea market. You want to project your paintings’ value with simple and clean presentation. Think like a gallery: white walls, lots of space, crisply printed title tags, high quality printed materials (i.e. business cards). If there’s room, perhaps a catalogue of works/price list.

What art should I show?

This question is much more tricky. With hundreds of competitors, you need a selection of paintings that brands you as an artist, stands out for it’s unique style, technique and theme. You want pieces that complement each other with similar colors. But you also want fucking good paintings – absolutely finished, pristine and polished: this means the edges have been painted or framed, the canvas has been glossed, it looks perfect. At the same time, you want something edgy/striking enough to make people gasp in awe-stricken stupor (ok, maybe not if you’re a landscape artist – but you should still shoot for it). Paint something that grips viewers and makes them sigh in wonder at the captivating beauty – or repugnant horror or scandalous humor – something that they will immediately go find their friends and drag them to visit your booth.

So what am I going to present?

Well I’m still struggling with that question. On the one hand I have some of my standard, unusual, Magritte-esque surrealist portraits of beautiful girls; a few of them are pretty good. Portraits or people paintings have won in the past. I also have some stronger pieces; my orange juice Buddha or my new sexy Sponge-Bob adultery painting, which is SURE to make a stir. But I also came back to Peru with some awesome wooden ornamental frames, to do a series of pop-art/religious icon paintings, which could be pretty awesome. I may need to get 2 booths this year.

Geisai2 Taipei Art Fair 2010 – Derek Murphy

What?: GEISAI TAIWAN#2 には、出展物がオリジナル作品であれば、プロ・アマ問わずどなたでも参加できます。
Where?: 台湾台北市華山創意文化園區 (Huashan Culture Park Taipei)


Today I went to a big art fair in HuaShan Culture Park called Geisei – it’s a Japanese art fair run by a famous artist. There were a couple hundred artists ranging from bleh to pretty sick (= great). Unfortunately, for my part, I didn’t do so well.

I’d planned on making a big deal out of this but have been too busy with school and writing my book, so I didn’t prepare at all. Also, I hadn’t realized that you were supposed to really think about how to use the space creatively. All I did was throw up some old beaten up paintings and some of my leftovers from previously galleries.

Also, probably because I paid last minute, they stuck me upstairs (I think opened an extra room as an afterthought) and about 1/4th or less of the visitors realized there was anything up there. So we missed all the heavy traffic. And, for some reason I brought only a few hundred of my postcards (rather than the 1000+ I have at home) so I ran out. Then, I took a taxi home to get more, but left me keys at the show, so went back empty handed. I had no business cards or anything, really pathetic. And I was freaking tired. I quit early and left.

It wasn’t a total loss, I got some exposure, people like my stuff, I made some new friends. If they do it again next year I’ll plan it well and put together a much better showing.

I was number “C001” (C-0-0-1) which looks like “Cool” . 🙂

Here are some pictures of the stuff I liked. My buddy Hack put together a very nice showing, spent a lot of time on it, was well prepared. My absolute favorite was the wolf wrestling the sexy sheep girl by Touko Yuma. Fantastic painting.