Over the past three decades, Emmanuel Perrotin has
built up a global business based on his sharp eye for
creativity and impeccable timing. This September saw
the opening of the French art dealer’s 18th gallery –
his irst in mainland China – near Shanghai’s Bund
waterfront. It’s a long way from his irst venture at
the age of 21, when each morning he would rise early
to transform his bijou Parisian apartment into a chic
gallery, showing work by then little-known artists
such as Damien Hirst and Maurizio Cattelan.
Shanghai is a natural home for Perrotin. Newfound
wealth and enchantment with art have buoyed several
art fairs, private institutions such as Wang Wei’s Long
Museum and Budi Tek’s Yuz Museum, and now oices
for blue-chip galleries Lévy Gorvy and Hauser & Wirth.
The area around the city’s Huqiu Road in particular
has become a new cultural enclave, home to the
Rockbund Art Museum and Christie’s auction house.
‘We have been looking in this area for a few years,
but wanted to ind the perfect space where people
would want to spend quality time,’ says Perrotin of the
top loor of the Concession-era building, which he has
turned into an airy 1,200 sq m contemporary gallery.
Perrotin already had form in Asia, spotting the
potential of Takashi Murakami long before he became
internationally renowned, and opening a 650 sq m
gallery in a RAMSA-designed building in Hong Kong
just before Art Basel chose the city as its Asian outpost
in 2013. He also opened galleries in Seoul in 2016 and
Tokyo in 2017, which exhibit an eclectic roster of artists
including Daniel Arsham, Izumi Kato and Paola Pivi.
The gallery’s Hong Kong-based partner Alice Lung
discovered the 1937 brick warehouse, formerly used by
the Central Bank of China. ‘It was much larger than
what we were originally looking for, but it gives us the
lexibility of scheduling more than one show at a time,
plenty of storage and high ceilings,’ she says.
Renovating a heritage space in China is not for the
faint of heart, so Perrotin enlisted the help of Hong
Kong architect André Fu to create four large exhibition
rooms and a mezzanine above with an oice, private
salon, meeting room and a terrace. Renowned for his
hospitality projects, most recently the Waldorf
Astoria Bangkok, Fu also designed Perrotin’s Hong
Kong and Tokyo galleries. The pair irst met after
Perrotin stayed at The Upper House hotel in HongKong (W*129), one of Fu’s early, career-deining (^) »
TA S K
FORCE
How André Fu made light work
of turning a historic space into
the new Perrotin Shanghai gallery
PHOTOGRAPHY: ALGIRDAS BAKAS WRITER: CATHERINE SHAW
From left, Perrotin’s
Hong Kong director
Alice Lung, architect
André Fu and gallery
owner Emmanuel Perrotin
in the Perrotin Shanghai
during construction
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