By Lynn Chen

Art fairs in emerging markets are always a gamble and such was the case at Art Paris-Abu Dhabi last week, the satellite branch of the Parisian fair, back in the United Arab Emirates for a second year. Besides the general lack of organization and indifferent sales, the fair was marred by the behavior of one errant collector.

The woman in question was said to be a sheika in the Abu Dhabi royal family and a prominent collector on the local scene. She made the rounds of the 59 gallery booths in the opulent gold-laden ballroom of Emirates Palace Hotel and pointed her royal finger at works that interested her. The chosen works were held aside and a few days later the galleries were visited by a representative of the sheika. Gallerists were told that they must accept discounts of 50, 60 and sometimes 80 per cent, otherwise there was no point in discussing things further. Though most Emirati collectors displayed a keen interest and in the art and a gracious attitude towards bargaining, the attitude of the sheika's representative infuriated many galleries who had refused works to other collectors in order to hold them for the sheika.

Gallerists griped about this excessive royal prerogative, and exclamations of 'This is not a carpet souk!' were tossed back and forth between the booths. There was some talk of writing an open letter of protest – but local galleries in particular worried about upsetting friends in high places.

The fair's offerings were generally on the tame side: Warhols, Miros, old masters – blue chip works that would catch the eye of largely inexperienced collectors. There was very little in the way of video or anything conceptual. But considering that last year anything 'figurative' was considered risqué, this year's edition is downright radical.

While galleries specializing in Western contemporary art generally reported modest sales, those focusing on the Middle East faired better. Works by Shirin Neshat (photos with Arabic script) proved particularly appealing to Middle Eastern clients.

At Leila Taghinia-Milani Heller Gallery, Farhad Moshirhi's abstract script based works that feature Arabic-Indic numerals (a numbering system different from Arabic numerals), painted pell-mell across the canvas, had a strong impact. Moshirhi paints on canvas then rolls it up to create a cracked effect. The result is stunning but not overly challenging and like much of the work on display had a strong decorative quality.

Despite our need to cover the fair in its entirety, we couldn't help but return to Kashya Hildebrand booth, which featured a strong selection of very tactile and decorative works including a mesmerizing series of works by Turkish artist Gulay Semercioglu. Rows of dark copper-colored wires are hitched around a line of finishing nails pounded into a wood base. Rhythmic precision, texture shine and tension. It was all there.

Korean artist Ran Hwang works with the yin and the yang, and used nails and thread and to create the shape of a rather portly vase. She alternates masking out the positive space and the negative space in a cross-hatching of thread or a series of mother of pearl buttons elevated off the canvas on straight pins.

Perhaps most impressive however was the Korean gallery Sun Contemporary, which went out on a limb by presenting only one artist. Their sparse white booth contained six works by artist Seon-Ghi Bahk, who uses fishing line to suspend pieces of charcoal from the ceiling at the same height so that they form objects, rings, tables and (our favorite) a staircase.


Work by Seon-Ghi Bahk

They hang phantom-like in the air, and Bahk placed a few errant pieces of charcoal either lower or higher than the stairs to imply a kind of disintegration of the form as if its rogue molecules have decided to form a separatist movement. While they appear immobile from afar, the pieces jostle each other gently like a crowd moving its way through a metro station.

The overall feeling was that local collectors are just beginning to develop their own tastes – but the fact that the government has made art a priority is really quite remarkable. Keep in mind that the UAE will celebrate it's 37th National Day this December and until about the 1960s, the region was largely populated by Bedouin peoples roaming the sands in caravans, who understandably had little place for a fixed artistic culture.

Oil was discovered in Abu Dhabi in the early 1960s and though the Emirate still has plenty of oil left, it is pipelining its cash into the arts. Art Paris-Abu Dhabi, which received great support from the government, is only one small part of Abu Dhabi's enormous cultural district planned for Saadiyat Island, which will include not only a Guggenheim (by Frank Gehry), but a Louvre (by Jean Nouvel) and an opera house (by Zaha Hadid), as well as a pavilion park, hotels, golf courses and hotels...

Abu Dhabi is part of a great race to attract cultural tourism – a race which includes the emirates of Dubai, Sharjah and Doha in neighboring Qatar. All are trying to re-define themselves as cultural meccas and investing huge sums of cash in infrastructural projects – in the hopes of diversifying some very oil-centric economies.

While the UAE is blessed with natural resources, its human resources are scant. The education system is really only kicking into gear with the arrival of international institutions, and knowledge about art is generally limited to the overseas-educated power elite. Still, what's really important here is the will to create something, and to channel those petrodollars into something ultimately more sustainable and vastly more enriching. This coming Wednesday the UAE will announce plans for its first pavilion in the Venice Biennale.