Turning art into business

Kevin Ching (left), CEO of Sotheby's Asia, and Wang Zhongjun at the presentation ceremony of Van Gogh's still-life, Vase with Daisies and Poppies. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Self-made billionaire and art collector Wang Zhongjun, 56, is an ambitious man. The chairman of Huayi Brothers Media aims to profit not only from China's flourishing entertainment industry but also by trading in art.

Wang signed a strategic cooperation agreement on June 22 in Beijing, through which Huayi Brothers Venture Capital, an affiliate of Wang's media enterprise, will establish an art-auction house in Shanghai jointly with Beijing Poly International Auction and Tianchen Times, a Beijing-based cultural corporation, which Wang co-founded.

A regular bidder at auctions, Wang says he has been collecting art for nearly 20 years, and the Shanghai auction house, which will be set up by the end of the year, will stage its inaugural auction in 2016 and two sales annually from the following year.

He says that the new company will also offer art-related financial services and products.

The signing ceremony was attended by high-ranking executives of the State-owned China Poly Group Corporation, including its chairman Xu Niansha. It also attracted the media, art collectors and artists, such as Zeng Fanzhi and Ai Xuan, whose paintings are favored by Wang.

The Huayi Brothers-Poly marriage, a union of two home-grown business giants, will benefit both partners as they will be able to access each other's client pools, says Zhao Xu, the executive director of Poly International Auction.

"Wang's love of art has influenced many of his entrepreneur friends who now also buy artworks and are potential clients we hope to reach out to," he says.

Poly, which has outlets selling fine arts in Beijing, Hong Kong, Weifang in Shandong province, Guangzhou in Guangdong province and Xiamen in Fujian province, earned $833 million in 2015, ranking behind Christie's (top) and Sotheby's, according to a global art market report released by the Paris-based art portal Artprice.com and Beijing-based Art Market Monitor of Artron.

Explaining why Shanghai was chosen for the new auction house, Zhao says that although Beijing has long been the country's art hub, more than 30 percent of Poly's customers are from Shanghai and neighboring Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces.

One of China's most developed areas, the Yangtze River Delta boasts a long tradition of collecting art, and has produced many prominent collectors over the years.

Meanwhile, Wang says that he will build his own art space in Beijing next year.

He aims to "pay back to society" by sharing his art with the public.

"Opening an art gallery is the ultimate goal of a collector, and it should be for public good," he says.

One of China's richest media moguls, Wang, a Beijing native, is worth more than $1 billion, according to Forbes magazine. He co-founded with brother Wang Zhonglei the Huayi Brothers Media in 1994, which specializes in film production, record labels and talent agency.

He was ranked at 309 on Forbes' China rich list for 2015 and 1,712 on the world's billionaires list.