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| Chinese Art and The Swiss Sense |
| By Stacey Duff |
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  any of their collections are not open, but the secret is out: the Swiss love Chinese contemporary art. Swiss collectors, gallery owners and institutions have been deeply involved in China's art scene since at least the early 1980s, well before there was a gallery system in place, when Uli Sigg, the former Swiss ambassador to China began meeting with artists in Beijing.
Of course the Swiss aren't the only ones who love contemporary Chinese art. Sotheby's blockbuster auction of Chinese contemporary art in New York last March is proof that there's a lot of love going around.
But the Swiss attraction arguably came first, and it remains the most pronounced. In 1992, the late Manfred Schoeni (who was born to Swiss parents) opened the Schoeni Gallery in Hong Kong. The gallery was dedicated to showing art from mainland China to an international audience. And five years later, Swiss born art expert Lorenz Helbling opened Shanghai's ShanghArt Gallery, one of the first private art galleries to operate in mainland China.
"I chose to open a gallery in Shanghai rather than Hong Kong because the city was really starting to take off economically," Helbling says.
Helbling had studied art history at Shanghai's Fudan University in the 1980s and also worked for a gallery in Hong Kong before making the decision that the time was ripe for artists to start exhibiting in greater China.
ShanghArt, which is now celebrating its tenth anniversary, represents some of China's hottest established and up-and-coming artists, including Zhou Tiehai, Yang Fudong, and Geng Jianyi.
But while art enthusiasts like Sigg and Helbling were busily establishing a base in China, some of China's most promising artists left the country in the aftermath of the pro democracy protests that erupted in 1989. And that proved to be another important factor in the Swiss story.
 After 1989, several promising young artists left China for New York, like Cai Guoqiang, Gu Wenda and Ai Wei Wei. But in the early 1990s, a large group also ended up in Paris, at just about the time that the Swiss born curator Hans Ulrich-Obrist, now director of international projects at the Serpentine Gallery in London, was reaching Paris.
Obrist, who had taken up residency in Paris with a grant from the Cartier Foundation, was soon meeting up with some of these Chinese born artists.
"It was an exciting moment," Hans Ulrich-Obrist said in a telephone interview. "I was there in Paris at just the same time that all these artists were coming from China. I really struck a friendship with several of them, like Huang Yongping and Chen Zhen and curator Hou Hanru."
The exchange that developed between Obrist and Hou Hanru proved to be essential in Sino-Swiss collaboration. Both curators had found a common interest in the fantastic urban growth that much of Asia was experiencing in the mid-1990s.
"Hou Hanru had experience in China and I had spent a lot of time in other parts of Asia – Japan, Korea and Bangkok. So we pooled our resources and exchanged ideas. That's how our 1997 show, 'Cities on the Move' was born," Obrist says.
Obrists says that while he was in Paris, he also got indispensable help from his Swiss compatriots back in China, Uli Sigg and Lorenz Helbling, who regularly introduced him to new artists from China.
Obrist, who is currently planning a major show of contemporary Chinese artists this October with Julia Peyton-Jones at Battersea Power Station in London, calls Sigg and Helbling “pioneers.”
In 1997, the "Cities on the Move" exhibition opened in Venice and then travelled for about five years to several other major cities, including New York, Helsinki and Bangkok. It also marked the first sustained curatorial collaboration between China and Europe; more importantly, it exposed China (and Asia) to a wider audience in the West.
 While Obrist and Hou were collaborating with "Cities on the Move," Uli Sigg was busy building his phenomenal collection of Chinese contemporary art, which now stands at over 1,200 pieces, making it perhaps the world's largest and most comprehensive collection of Chinese contemporary art.
"There were very few galleries in Beijing at the time," Sigg recently told an audience at Timezone 8 Bookstore in Beijing. "So meeting the artists directly was really the only way to see the art." Sigg says he scurried around Beijing meeting artists – hundreds of them – at a critical juncture.
And today, his influence goes beyond collection. In 1998, he established the Chinese Contemporary Art Awards, placing Ai Wei Wei, Hou Hanru, Yi Ying, himself and independent Swiss curator Harald Szeeman on the awards jury.
Before his death a few years ago, it was Szeeman who would thrust the next important advance for contemporary Chinese art in Europe when he introduced 19 Chinese artists at the 1999 Venice Biennale.
"Harald Szeeman was such a hugely key figure in Post-war art," says Jonathan Napack, Asia advisor for Art Basel. "I mean, here was a guy who really helped to invent the modern art world. So in 1999, when Harald Szeeman said, 'Look, I'm interested in Chinese art,' people listened."
Obrist calls Szeeman a great inspiration. "We had a friendly dialogue with Harald and it was a long dialogue. When I was a kid I read all his books, and he was so influential, I think, on an entire generation, especially with his idea that one could become a curator. He was one among many inspirations for me."
 By 2000, Helbling, Sigg, Szeemann and Obrist weren't the only Swiss involved. Compatriot Urs Meile was also showing Chinese contemporary artists at his Galerie Urs Meile in Lucerne, Switzerland.
Meile first came to China in 1996 at the invitation of Uli Sigg, who by then was appointed the Swiss ambassador to China. Meile says that in 1996 and 1997 he made several trips to cities around China, getting to know artists.
"Step by step I became convinced that the art scene in China had great potential" Mr Meile says. "And in early 1998 I did my first group show with Chinese artists. For the first six or seven years of my activities in this field, most of the 'members of the Western art scene' told me that nothing interesting is happening in China."
Today, Urs Meile's gallery continues to play a major role in the contemporary Chinese art scene.
Since 2003, Galerie Urs Meile has been a sister-gallery to Ai Wei Wei's China Art Archives Warehouse in Beijing. Earlier this year, Galerie Urs Meile also opened a space of its own in Beijing, where it continues to collaborate with Ai Wei Wei's China Art Archives Warehouse.
Many Beijing galleries declined to release the names of their Swiss clients because of confidentiality agreements. But the Swiss love for Chinese art has become so well-known that at least one Chinese gallery has moved to Switzerland.
Grace Li opened a gallery in Zurich two years ago because, she says, "Zurich is a good place for art."
So what makes a Swiss collector a Swiss collector? Just the nationality? And why does it seem that Swiss have become so obsessed with contemporary Chinese art?
 “There is something about Switzerland,” Obrist says, “and it's not coincidence and it is not only China the Swiss are interested in. But as you know it's a very small country, and when you’re born you feel narrowness and you can't really see the sea and the mountains block your view and there is no city, like Paris or London or Beijing. And obviously when you grow up with this small, narrow context, you are more propelled to venture into other contexts.”
Napack, who is organizing an Art Basel Conversation event at Beijing's National Art Museum of China this month, points to economic reasons.
"Swiss identity is fundamentally cosmopolitan. Not only that, but the Swiss love for art is centuries old: art to Basel, for example, is like... Christianity to Bethlehem or the Blues to the Mississippi Delta. It's that fundamental. It's also a place where people understand the value of long-term thinking and investment."
Back in Shanghai, as he prepares for the tenth anniversary celebrations at ShanghArt, Mr. Helbling also insists that while the Swiss aren't fixated on all things Chinese, they are extremely familiar with quality and patience.
"When we look at a young artist, we really are looking for quality," Helbling says. "Personally, I want to know whether this artist has potential for growth – whether he actually has skill – because we want to build a longstanding relationship with the artist. We don't aim to make an artist famous overnight. Our relationship is mutual. We work at it and it takes time."
image3、6 collecter Uli Sigg
image5 gallery director Urs Meile 
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