Art Market
Installation view of Thaddaeus Ropac’s booth at West Bund Art & Design 2025. Courtesy of Thaddaeus Ropac.
Taking place across five venues and hosting almost 200 exhibitors, West Bund Art & Design 2025 offers a sprawling feast for art lovers across Shanghai’s riverfront cultural corridor.
Founded in 2012 by the painter Zhou Tiehai, West Bund Art & Design has evolved into a touchstone of the fall art world calendar. With exhibitors this year from 22 countries and 48 cities, the fair stands out for its breadth: International and domestic names stand side by side here, resulting in a varied viewing experience. Visitors here are as likely to encounter works by international heavyweight artists such as Alex Katz and Tracey Emin as they are to discover exciting emerging artists they’ve never heard of. Price points are equally varied. It’s that convergence which makes the fair an exciting proposition for international galleries, many of which are now regular attendees.
“China remains one of the most important markets for the gallery,” said Dawn Zhu, director of Asia at international blue-chip gallery Thaddaeus Ropac. “We have been participating in West Bund Art & Design for ten years, and this consistency has enabled us to build meaningful relationships with collectors, curators, and institutions, which have brought great opportunities.”
Installation view of West Bund Art & Design 2025. Courtesy of West Bund Art & Design.
The fair is an anchor of a stuffed Shanghai Art Week, which this year includes the 15th Shanghai Biennale, “Does The Flower Hear the Bee?” and the usual suite of openings and exhibitions taking place in every corner of the vast city. Meanwhile, museum highlights this year include Li Hei Di at the Pond Society and Wallace Chan at the Long Museum.
As West Bund’s VIP day got underway on Thursday, November 13th, the high energy that had characterized events earlier in the week was noticeable across the fair. This was particularly true in its new main venue, the West Bund International Convention and Exhibition Center, a sleek six-story space that allowed for more expansive booth presentations. The fair also included a “xiàn chăng” sector, which, much like Art Basel Unlimited, hosted large-scale artworks, installations, and performance art in a former warehouse building.
As Shanghai’s bustling art scene evolves, the fair has become an unmissable occasion with no shortage of standouts across its exhibitors. Here, Artsy selects five standout works at the fair priced under $10,000.
Two Cones, 2025
Presented by Capsule
Price: $6,500–$7,500
Mounted on a shelf at Shanghai tastemaker Capsule’s booth is a sculptural creature by Douglas Rieger that looks as if it is about to scuttle off its perch. Two Cones (2025) continues the American artist’s preoccupation with making objects that appear animate. Here, his sculpture appears insect-like.
The wooden base—almost like bird legs or talons—gives the sculpture a poised posture, while the aluminum forms are constructed like metallic fabric caught mid-billow. Their surfaces are gently undulating, with soft dents and folds that give them a strangely biological presence. It’s a scorpion-like figure with inflated aluminum forms that make it feel like a proto-organism—a bit creepy, yes, but also a touch playful, too.
“The work captures the moment when a form begins to emerge, poised on the threshold between becoming and being,” the gallery’s founder, Enrico Polato, told Artsy. “Two cones evokes an object in transition—part creature, part machine, tentative and extending itself into space.”
Stars Dance, 2023
Presented by Don Gallery
Price: ¥20,050 ($2,818)
Lin Shan, Stars Dance, 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Don Gallery.
Plants are a favored subject of the Chinese artist Lin Shan, and in the painting Stars Dance (2023), a tree with dense, feathery foliage drops its leaves under a deep blue night sky. On closer inspection, however, natural and celestial imagery seem to come together, with golden tips descending onto the branches.
“If you look from afar, it’s a tree and it has its leaves falling down, but if you look closely, it’s like stars are all over the canvas,” a spokesperson from the gallery told Artsy. “In her images, the leaves and flowers are always moving, dancing.”
This charming painting, just 33 by 25 centimeters in size, is serene and enchanting. Here, Shan turns an ordinary scene of nature into something cosmic. It’s a painting that slows one down (particularly in a bustling art fair), offering a moment of stillness and wonder. It’s a highlight in a strong booth from Don Gallery, which is based in Shanghai.
The demure pause before a deft declaration, 2025
Presented by Matthew Liu Fine Arts
Price: $5,000
Luong Thai, The demure pause before a deft declaration, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Matthew Liu Fine Arts.
Around the side of Shanghai heavyweight Matthew Liu Fine Arts’s booth is a solitary figure against a vivid pink backdrop. The eye-catching painting, by Vietnamese American artist Luong Thai, shows the rising painter’s gift for capturing intimate moments with honesty and boldness.
The male figure depicted here is sitting with one arm draped casually, the other resting in a gesture that suggests hesitation. His face carries a faintly uncertain expression, a reference to the work’s title that indicates a thought is forming. Rendered with a loose, wavering outline and soft, muted tones of orange and earth, he appears caught in a moment of what could be introspection and emotional vulnerability.
“Luong is fascinated by how simple figures can reveal so much about posture, stance, and personal space concerning people and [their] surrounding environment,” said a spokesperson from the gallery. Indeed, the figure’s mix of poise and unease evocatively captures a moment of insecurity, a near-universal experience.
Untitled, 1972
Presented by Barry Friedman Ltd.
Asking price: ¥70,000 ($9,841)
Zao Wou-Ki, Untitled, 1972. Courtesy of Barry Friedman Li
An explosive, volcanic energy radiates from the frame of this crimson copperplate engraving by late Chinese French painter Zao Wou-Ki, who was celebrated for his lyrical, atmospheric works that merge Eastern sensibilities with Western modernism.
Untitled (1972) captures the artist’s signature fusion of calligraphy and abstraction that made him one of the most important cross-cultural artists of the 20th century. Against a saturated red background, dark strokes surge upward and outward in tangled, forceful bursts, creating the impression of something erupting and dissolving simultaneously
Layered marks evoke a natural landscape with hints of earth, fire, tree roots, and rising smoke all featuring in this intense composition. Still, there’s a sense of balance here, as if nature’s chaos were being coaxed into harmony.
The work is a highlight on the densely hung booth of the New York gallery Barry Friedman Ltd. The booth’s historically focused selection also features works by the likes of Christo and Léonard Tsugouharu Foujita.
Illusory Armament, 2025
Presented by DE SARTHE
Price: $6,400
Eerie and uncanny, this assemblage by Chinese artist Caison Wang harkens to both ancient myths and futuristic technology. Placed in a corner of Hong Kong gallery DE SARTHE’s booth, Illusory Armament (2025) looks as if it’s grown from an alien simulation rather than built by hand.
A segmented sculpture of a forearm—evoking both an artist’s model of a hand and a robotic prosthetic— grasps a dazzling gold object that could be a spiked weapon or otherworldly creature. It’s made of 3D-printed nylon, which is stained and textured to look like marble, giving the effect of a classical sculpture. Coiling around the arm are glossy, serpentine forms in vivid red and strands of bright pink beads. It all amounts to a beguiling sculpture that draws on themes of danger, ornament, and seduction. According to the gallery’s founder, Pascal de Sarthe, this is a commentary on our collective embrace of artificial intelligence: both exciting and scary.
“Wang makes a parallel with how people will put their faith into new technology—and how artificial intelligence will change how we believe in something,” he told Artsy. Wang will open a solo show with the gallery next week.
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Arun Kakar
Arun Kakar is Artsy’s senior art market editor focused on explaining and unpacking the commercial art world. Before he joined Artsy in late 2022, he held staff positions at titles including the New Statesman, Spear’s Magazine, and Management Today, among others. He holds a BA in philosophy from the University of York and lives in Central London.
