David Chau: in Deﬁance of Conventions

Julie Chun David Chau: In Deﬁance of Conventions

n just the past year, a formerly David Chau, President of Cc Foundation, Shanghai. Photo: unnoticed group within China’s art Mobe Ban Whu. Icommunity has achieved meteoric attention and media coverage. They are not artists or curators or even high profile museum directors. They are the new faction of a young (thirty-five and under) and affluently divested “artrepreneur,” a term applied to differentiate them from the older generation of discreet art collectors and to highlight the effects of their dramatic buying power for purchasing art in bulk.1 It’s almost impossible for these handful numbers of men to escape anyone’s attention as fodders for online and WeChat attention. They include the founders Adrian Cheng of chi K11 art museums in Hong Kong and mainland China, Lu Xun of Sifeng Art Museum in Nanjing, Lin Han of M Woods Museum in Beijing, and Chong Zhou of the Shanghai restaurant Le Petit Cochon Vert. They have been educated abroad and command full confidence to grant interviews in Mandarin and perfect English. They also possess a no-nonsense ability to put down significant sums of money with relative ease where no older collectors had usually dared.

David Chau belongs to this category of China’s new artrepreneurs. Helming disparate businesses such as a ﬂeet company and modeling agency as well as diverse contemporary art projects, David Chau is widely known for his support of Shanghai’s galleries and launching the annual Art 021 Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair (begun 2013). His Cc Foundation is the sponsor of the 2016 Yishu Awards for writing and curating on contemporary Chinese art.

Julie Chun: I’ve read a few interviews and accounts about you that are available on the Internet and I found that it seems there is only one legitimate interview you had given, which itself was quite short. And all other articles were just citing or making references to that interview. So can you please tell me a little bit about yourself?

David Chau: Yes, there are several accounts about me online where the facts and numbers are completely wrong. To begin, I was born in Shanghai but my parents went to Hong Kong after I was born. Before I was ﬁve years old, my grandparents on my mother’s side raised me. Then I moved to Hong Kong for about a year and lived with my aunt because my parents had

54 moved back to Shanghai. In Hong Kong, I attended preschool and began grade 1, and then I came back to Shanghai and attended a local school to complete grades 1 and 2 and then transferred to an international school in grade 3 and 4. In 1995, our family moved to Vancouver, Canada.

Julie Chun: Why Canada?

David Chau: Canada was a popular destination for Hong Kong ID and passport holders. At about that time there was the looming issue of Hong Kong being transferred back to mainland China, slated for 1997. So prior to the hand-over, many Hong Kong, Taiwanese, and Cantonese people moved to Canada. My parents couldn’t manage to stay in Vancouver because to them it was too boring, so they came back to Asia after a couple of months with my younger brother and sister who at the time were signiﬁcantly younger than me. I lived with my aunt in Vancouver through grades 5 and 6, and when I was just beginning grade 7, my parents wanted me to move back to Hong Kong to be with them. So I went to Hong Kong for another two years before I found my way back to Canada to attend boarding school.

Julie Chun: So you missed Canada?

David Chau: Yes, when I was much younger. Mostly because I had good memories of living in Vancouver and perhaps I wanted to go back to Canada because I wasn’t used to living with my parents. For most of my early childhood, I never really lived with my parents for more than about two years at one time.

Julie Chun: As you are recounting your childhood to me, the one obvious factor that emerges is that you must have had to mature quite early being displaced from your parents.

David Chau: I did. I had to move schools almost every two years, and I was traveling alone on an airplane since six years old. I’m used to being by myself. Because I moved around so much, I didn’t have stable sets of friends. I was good at making friends, but never really good ones. I adjust very well to different environments and am usually the guy that everyone likes. But I’m never able to open up myself to anybody, because that’s just the way I grew up, I guess. Maybe I don’t want myself to get too attached to people. That was why I usually surrounded myself with stuff that I liked and I had to find a lot of stuff that interested me. I like to read. I love stories— histories and novels. When I was much younger, I also read a lot of action and mystery stories. I collected first edition books of mysteries, novels, science fiction, and even comic books. I’m an expert in superhero comics. The movies have made them big but I’m really the expert on all things superhero. I amassed quite a collection of comic books and sports cards as a kid. I was attached to things and that became my hobby—collecting the things that I loved. Then I realized that it was only a matter of time before these books accrued in value. Some first edition books went from about one hundred dollars to three thousand dollars in one year.

Julie Chun: Did your parents spoil you with material goods because you lived far away from them?

55 David Chau: No. My parents never spoilt me. I had to make my own money.

I received my first stamps from my grandparents when I was five or six. Back in the early 1990s, stamp trading was the first market that opened up in China and not the stock market. Even Liu Yiqian [founder of the Long Museum in Shanghai] started off making money with stamp trading. He was a taxi driver and then he was a stamp trader. I believe everything is connected once you get into something. Collecting is something that is not just innate. It’s a process of collecting one thing and then moving into something else. Which is why I don’t believe art collecting happens overnight. If you have never collected anything, you cannot start collecting art and be really successful at it.

Collecting and business became my two main interests in life from early on. I became interested in sports cards when I moved to Canada because basketball and hockey and the sports culture are a big part of life there. When I moved to Hong Kong to attend international school, I realized there were many kids who also collected sports cards. I sold sports cards to the local boys in Hong Kong who had way more money than the kids in Canada. I was able to do a brisk business with my classmates. I was even featured in the newspaper when I was twelve for sports card trading and making good money from it.

Julie Chun: So what did you do with the money you earned as a youth?

David Chau: I took the money and invested more. As I mentioned, I like to read. I read a lot of business books early on. I read Rich Dad Poor Dad [by Robert T. Kiyosaki], which was a fairly easy book for an eleven-year old kid to read. Despite what people say about the book, it’s a good primer for business and investment.

Write ups say I made my early wealth selling sports cards on eBay, but we didn’t have the Internet in the 1995–96. I made a lot of money trading sports cards before eBay by going to card trade shows. In fact, it wasn’t until 1997 that I was on eBay selling sports cards. I tell people I am not an Internet start up entrepreneur but I was the ﬁrst Internet entrepreneur. Even to this day, I still believe the Internet is part of the business but it’s all about what you do as a business in using the Internet as a tool for achieving those business goals.

Julie Chun: Even from a young age, the idea that one can liquidate an object into a ﬁnancial asset seemed to have excited you.

David Chau: Yes, that excites me a lot, tremendously. I’m a pragmatic person. I have to admit the money part of what I collect really excites me. I admit I’m not a successful dealer, which is why I’m not an art dealer nor am I a book dealer. Nor do I take my money out of collectibles because I’m a bad investor. I can never part with the stuff that I really like at the right moment.

Julie Chun: Do you play the stock market?

56 David Chau: Actually, I don’t. I’m not a trader. The proﬁt excites me but everything I learned about myself through all my early experiences, I realized I am not a totally speculative person. But, at the same time, I’m not the kind of person who wants to be a museum collector. I’m kind of in-between because I cannot part with the art that I love. And the art that I am not interested in, I’m not a good seller because I cannot lie about its value. If I want to sell a work of art that I have, I will sell it right away. Or I sell it through the auction or I let the market decide its value but that’s not how one normally does art. One holds onto it and sells it with the right people at the right moment. One does exhibitions and provides value to product. I can’t do that. I can’t sell art if I don’t think it’s good for my friends or clients.

Julie Chun: I’m going to pull you back a bit. Let’s go back to Canada. Let’s go back to your university years. What was your undergraduate major in college?

David Chau: At the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, I studied classical Chinese art history.

Julie Chun: That’s curious because despite everything that led you to that point, why art history?

David Chau: I decided on my major in my second year and selected what I was interested in. I minored in philosophy and International Relations. I wanted to explore different things and many courses were intertwined. I applied in the end to be an art history major because I believe that in order to understand the contemporary art of today, you have to understand art history—its past and its connections between the East and West, how the two sides came together, merged, and separated again.

Julie Chun: Did you spend a lot of time in museums?

David Chau: Not initially. But in my second year of university, my art history professor was Tsao Hsingyuan. On my own I was studying the art market. I was evaluating the trends of contemporary Chinese art and recognized that its value was going up. That was around 2002–03 when Yue Minjun and Zhang Xiaogang’s work was making its ascent. I mentioned to Tsao Hsingyuan that I really wanted to study the market side, not just the academic side, of contemporary Chinese art. She was also interested in this idea because she had personal connections with many of the artists since she had graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. She introduced me to Zheng Shengtian. At the time, Tsao Hsingyuan was married to James Cahill. It was incredible to have scholars like them as mentors. Some of the students, including me, were able to go to Cahill’s house on the weekends to study with him. We had quite a bit of hands-on study time with him even though we were not his students because he was retired.

At that time, there was Huang Yongping’s exhibition in Vancouver and then Xu Bing’s. That was when I ﬁnally stepped into a museum—the Vancouver Art Gallery. Since Tsao Hsingyuan was friends with Xu Bing, she had her students help out at his exhibition with tasks such as translations and other odds and ends. That led me in and out of the museum.

57 It was the summer after I completed my second year of university, when I was nineteen, that I came back to Shanghai and began working at Hwas Gallery, which at the time was located in the Hongqiao area. Back then, there weren’t many contemporary art galleries. Hua Yuzhou, the owner of Hwas Gallery, was one of the original gallerists in Shanghai. He is the first generation of gallerists, having begun as a manager of J Gallery, just outside of the Jinjiang Hotel. Then Hua Yuzhou opened his own gallery in 1994 and 1995. He represented artists like Chen Yifei, whom I have deep respect for because he is probably one of the most important people in contemporary art in terms of pushing the market. Everything that we are doing now in the art business, such as branding and crossing over to film and media, Chen Yifei is the first to have done this. He also brought in the major collectors, including fostering Liu Yiqian. Chen Yifei served as a bridge between the artists and the collectors and helped many artists to sell their work.

That was my entry into the art world. I went to the auction house in the summer of 2003. I bought a work on paper by Wu Dayu, which was affordable back then, a couple thousand Hong Kong dollars. I like and respect Wu Dayu a lot.

Julie Chun: According to the WideWalls article “7 Young Art Collectors From China: A New Generation Of The Huge Chinese Art Market,”2 you possess around 150 pieces by Wu Dayu. Is this correct?

David Chau: That’s incorrect. No one has 150 pieces. I have about twenty works on paper and a couple of oil paintings, and that’s it. And I’m already one of the biggest collectors of Wu Dayu’s work. He only has about 120 oil paintings available that are left and about a thousand works on paper.

Julie Chun: So what was your role at Hwas Gallery?

David Chau: I was the director of Hwas Gallery and spent much time in Asia doing business with the galleries and the auction houses. Hua Yuzhou liked me because I took care of many aspects of the business. Eventually we became partners of Hwas gallery for about two or three years. Then I left because at a certain point, the direction wasn’t going the way I thought it should be going. But I cannot stress enough that Hua Yuzhou is a good dealer. Even to this day, he is still a good dealer. When I left, I didn’t want to be involved with galleries any more because I realized the only reason Hua Yuzhou and I were able to work together was because he is a great salesman and I am good at picking the artists and taking care of the curation side. But if I were to move on my own without him, I felt I couldn’t do it. Also, I had a much bigger goal. I wanted to make more money and do greater things. If you look at the things I do now, I’m never the type that follows. In 2008, the stock market crashed. That was when I started Metropolis International Leasing Co., Ltd., one of China’s largest ﬂeet management companies.

Julie Chun: So do the proceeds from Metropolis Leasing fund your art related endeavours?

David Chau: No, they remain separate. Metropolis is a company with about two hundred plus employees all over China and I have partners in this

58 business. I don’t want to be like other Chinese owners who use company money to fund their foundation. Metropolis has been growing since 2009. We started with one car and now we are up to two thousand cars and trucks. It’s been a good company.

Julie Chun: You have collected art works by some of the early twentieth century modernist masters. What is your selection process?

David Chau: I look for works that are undervalued, but in China there is too much cheap art because there are far too many fakes. You have to know what you’re buying. Ink paintings by Guan Liang were really inexpensive at that time. My market radar was on the ﬁrst generation of Chinese artists who were contemporary with Picasso and Matisse.

Julie Chun: Can you tell me a little more about your Cc Foundation?

David Chau: Cc Foundation is a non-profit multi-faceted art foundation that I privately fund. We support young contemporary artists and assist those with good ideas. I felt that there was a way to improve the foundation system. The Cc foundation supports commissioned works and curatorial projects. Most recently I launched “Space I,” an exhibition site [with a floor area of over 2,000 square meters] in Songjiang Art Zone and “Space II” [with a floor area of over 200 square meters] that will open in November of this year at M50 Art District in Shanghai.

Julie Chun: What does Cc stand for?

David Chau: It has many meanings. First of all, it’s the last name of my parents. Both are Chau or Zhou in Chinese. It also stands for “culture and community” of the Internet age. I want to support the creative development of emerging artists and promote the art practices of various media as well as the general working environment for professionals to develop a platform for the Chinese contemporary art industry that will have a global impact. The space serves multiple functions; from exhibitions, education, public programs, production, meetings, media platform, collections, and even entertainment.

Julie Chun: This sounds vaguely like what Adrian Cheng established with his K11 Art Foundation.

David Chau: Well, it’s totally different because for Cc Foundation, it’s not just art. It’s going to involve music, movies, clothing, and much more. I had this idea to bridge art with everyday culture back in 2005. I always say I don’t do things that don’t need me. I like to think that I am helping out this whole ecosystem of the art world. I do what I believe I should do. When I see someone pursuing with a passion or dream in the utmost crazy way, it doesn’t matter to me whether they are doctors or scientists or even a gardener, they are artists to me even though they are not necessarily making art. So art does not have to be solely visual or conceptual. It’s about the pursuit in the most sincere and passionate way. I like to surround myself with people who share my values and who understand me. Which is why I get along so well with Xu Zhen.

Julie Chun: I’m so glad you brought him up. Your partnership has always been a conundrum for me.

59 David Chau: It’s because he and I share the same values. We have a lot in common. We don’t operate according to the standards of the conventional art system. We have our own system. The value that I share with Xu Zhen is that we want more people to get to know contemporary art. We don’t want the art world to be a small circle. We didn’t like each other initially, for almost ten years, because we both possess a strong personality. But since 2005, we’ve been good buddies.

Julie Chun: Do you have any business partnership with Xu Zhen?

David Chau: The only project we collaborated on together was PIMO, which in Chinese means rookie or superﬁcial knowledge. It also means fur, but really it doesn’t mean much except that it sounds great. It’s an art company that does many things, but mostly developing and providing large amounts of contemporary art products and services. It is our shared endeavour to present contemporary art that is not impossible to comprehend and a way to simplify things and connect people to contemporary art. With PIMO, we never plan in advance. We do a “festival” when we see that the time and the projects are appropriate, and it’s executed rather quickly. The ﬁrst and second PIMO events were carried out in less than a month.

Many people may not be aware, but before I launched Art021 in 2013, Shanghai’s art scene was hardly thriving. You have no idea how many [Chinese] collectors bought their ﬁrst piece of Western art at Art021. We put our attention towards fostering Chinese collectors. Wang Wei [from Long Museum] still asks my opinion about each piece of Western art she buys. We haven’t made any money with Art021 because all the money goes back into fostering the collectors or buying art from the galleries that didn’t sell. Many of these collectors who purchased from Art021 then went onto Hong Kong Art Basel. I’m proud of laying this foundation [for mainland Chinese collectors]. Even the name 021 in Art021 is derived from the area code of Shanghai. It is by building the knowledge of art in local collectors at home that they will branch outward to the international art scene. And I want to stress that Art021 is not Art Basel because most of our selection of galleries are still Asian-based galleries—Korean, Japanese, and Chinese. We totally believe in supporting the local and Asian art scene and Asian collectors.

Julie Chun: What’s your future direction?

David Chau: I want to explore the essence of art—by that I mean how can art become music again. In the eighteenth and nineteenth century, art mattered to people’s lives. People cried when they saw a painting. They lived with art. Yes, they didn’t have other distractions like the movies and the Internet, which we have today, but they had poetry and literature. I’m interested in art that has this kind of essence, in locating the genuine.

Notes

1. Wealth-X, “China’s Millenial ‘Artrepreneurs’ Think Outside Of The White Cube,” http://www.wealthx. com/articles/2015/chinas-art-collecting-millennials-think-outside-of-the-white-cube/. 2. Lorenzo Pereira, “ 7 Young Art Collectors From China: A New Generation Of The Huge Chinese Art Market,” WideWalls, not dated, http://www.widewalls.ch/young-art-collectors-china/.