With a total of 3,000 square meters exhibiting space and a 8,000 square meters botanical garden，Artist Village Gallery has one of Beijing's largest exhibiting space focusing on contemporary art. As the earliest and biggest gallery in Songzhuang, the gallery and its owner experienced the development of Songzhuang, and the gallery itself has become an important witness of the village.
As a bridge linking to the outside world, Artist Village Gallery is trying to let more people be aware of the artists far away from the so-called mainstream by organizing an exhibition and activity on each month’s basis to make more people have a better understanding of contemporary works.
More than 14 years ago, YanYu and his wife Sally came to Songzhuang to seek their ideal. With the dream in their mind, they built their first house in XiaoPu and settled down for a simple country life. Persuaded by YanYu and his friends, Sally began using her media platform to promote Songzhuang and Songzhuang artists, bringing international visitors to Songzhuang. Unlike the urbanization of Xiaopu village, they moved to a smaller village in Songzhuang - RenZhuang village - constructing a group of Chinese style buildings as exhibiting space by clearing a garbage heap in the village, to show the works from Songzhuang artists, aiming to introduce China contemporary art and Songzhuang to the world, supporting those talented artists living in this community to stay as long as they can to build their fame.
With its effective promotion, Artist Village Gallery has been successful in bringing a lot of international attention to Songzhuang and Chinese contemporary art. Among its visitors are curators from major museums such as Moma, ambassadors, visiting officials from foreign governments and the United Nations, and media people from France, England (BBC), Germany, Belgium, Italy, Norway, Denmark, America, Russia, Singapore and Hong Kong etc. Even one former US president's wife visited the gallery. After visiting the gallery, the Cultural minister of Holland Medy van der laan give a high opinion about the gallery and the minister plenipotentiary from Holland embassy even rates the gallery as one of the best galleries in Beijing. The cultural minister of Singapore also visited the gallery while visiting Beijing, praising the gallery’s contributing in promoting the community.
By showing its first-rate contemporary works in a unique environment, Artist Village Gallery has functioned as an important window showing Songzhuang to the world, a necessary bridge linking to the outside and a reliable source for quality works from Songzhuang. Through Artist Village Gallery’s hard working, many Songzhuang artists have successfully exhibited their works in galleries from America, France, Holland, Germany, England, Belgium, Singapore, Malaysia and Korea.
Because of its high quality works Artist Village Gallery is also invited to take Songzhuang artists’ work to attend art fairs abroad. It has taken Songzhuang’s work to attend MiArt twice and Art Singapore twice.
