Upmarket hotel puts snails in the bed and cats on the toilet for prominent Asian art fair

(All Rights Reserved)

Seoul's chic Shilla Hotel will be transformed into an avant-garde gallery in August for an innovative art fair that's putting Asian art on the map.

The Asia Top Gallery Hotel Art Fair (AHAF) is part of a developing art fair trend that is trying to revolutionize the way in which collectors and visitors view art.

"Compared to the general art fair exhibition at the White Cube, this exhibition will utilize hotel rooms by offering paintings on beds and sculptures in bathtubs. In addition, this new display concept will allow prospective buyers the chance to imagine the paintings as they will look displayed in their own rooms," say organizers.

Visitors to AHAF can contemplate what it might be like to put a sculpture of a snail on their bed or to house an installation that features a cat, deer and sheep in their bathroom.

The idea of the hotel as gallery is proving popular across the globe as galleries and artists seek out new ways to expose their art works for a public that is tiring of the standard.

During the past couple of years, numerous hotel-based art fairs - the likes of which include Aqua Art Miami, Trajector Art Fair (Brussels), Pool Art Fair (New York, Guadeloupe, Miami), DoJiMa Art fair (Osaka), and Art@Agnes (Tokyo) - have sprung up in cities around the world as organizers seek to provide a fun and original way for viewers to experience contemporary artwork.

AHAF also seeks to promote and foster emerging Asian artists by uniting Asian countries as one community. More than 70 top galleries from Korea, China and Japan have come together to showcase the works of over 400 Asian artists at AHAF.

Asia Top Gallery Hotel Art Fair runs from August 27 to 29 at the Shilla Hotel in Seoul, South Korea.

http://www.hotelartfair.kr/