By Ines Min

Imagine: 2,100 works by 350 artists, collected over the course of more than 30 years, following personal visits to more than 1,500 studios.

The famed collection of Uli Sigg, though impressive in its statistics, is noted for its attitude. The Swiss native owns the single largest collection of contemporary Chinese art — not to amass a valuable fortune, but to record the history of the youthful art scene as a historian.

“I really didn’t know anything about China because it had been inaccessible to the outside world,” Sigg, 65, told reporters Friday at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Deoksu Palace, referring to when he first arrived in the Asian country in 1980.

“I was always being observed, never alone, and could not see much of the Chinese reality. ...I felt I had to have another access.”

Finding his outlet in the barely budding industry of contemporary art, Sigg moved from collecting Western artworks from his college days to acquiring works of Chinese artists for a hobby, as a businessman in China’s first international venture. His knowledge of the country later led him to become the Swiss ambassador to China (as well as North Korea and Mongolia), and his ties continued to grow through various business and media-related activities.

Today, few exhibitions on the medium can be held without reference to his collection, and the current “Made in Popland” at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea, shows 11 works from his archives. Major artists in the Sigg collection include Yu Minjun, Ai Weiwei and Zhang Huan, and the collector was in Seoul over the weekend to give a lecture on his view of the art scene.

In the three decades since his start, Sigg has helped nurture, shape and introduce the underground scene of contemporary art to the larger world.

“I was fortunate to be there since day one of the open door policy... and day one of contemporary Chinese art,” Sigg said. When he saw that there was no one taking notice of the industry, he began collecting, not according to his personal tastes, but in a systematic, academic approach — somebody had to do it, he felt.

Though it may seem odd that the foremost authority on the medium is a man from Switzerland, Sigg has never been one to monopolize the spotlight. Indeed, his preservation of decades-old works have stirred emotional reactions from Chinese natives, who’ve never viewed their contemporary art history before his exhibitions.

“The fact that I was a foreigner was made for me, it was not a choice,” he said. He ultimate goal is to return the collection in whole back to the people, although specifics of when and how have yet to be decided.

“I did it so as to start a debate in China, of what is meaningful art, what is good, what is bad. I’ve said, ‘this shouldn’t be my thing, this is a Chinese thing.’”

As contemporary art was largely oppressed by the government, not many even realized Sigg’s collection until a decade ago.
“Until 2000, my collecting of contemporary art was a risk and not in any way an asset. Because it was underground... it was not viewed favorably.”

But still, Sigg was allowed travel permits across the nation, something that was not easily given to nationals. This accessibility and his background helped feed into his ‘hobby’ as a collector.

He essentially was the entire Chinese market in the 1980s, buying works for around $100, which then grew to $1,000 in the ‘90s and are now in the million-dollar range. He also began to introduce international curators to Chinese work through the creation of the Chinese Contemporary Art Awards (the first commendation for the genre) in 1998.

Today, the scene has continued to grow, with Hong Kong set to be one of the next major centers of art trade, Sigg said, in particular to Korean, Southeast Asian and other Eastern art.

“Hong Kong has what will be the No. 1 art fair in Asia... a number of things will come together.”

Sigg also keeps an eye on the rest of the global industry, and acquires Western and even Korean artwork for his personal side collections.

But his Chinese works are the jewels in the crown, which represent both a life-long endeavor and also practical hiccups in daily life, often stemming from problems of where to keep it all. With his archives reaching in the thousands, he has had to build an entire storage space for his artworks.

“For a long time, (Chinese artists) haven’t been as professional as Western artists in thinking of storage,” Sigg said jokingly. “They create artwork not thinking about the logistics of storage afterward.”

“For example, I have a pillar made of human fat. How do you store that? A four-meter pillar.”

inesmin@koreatimes.co.kr

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