John Dodelande is a collector of a new kind: both businessman and aesthete, he never ceases to combine his passion with unparalleled entrepreneurial energy in search of innovative models.
His collection is more particularly dedicated to contemporary Chinese art, of which he is one of the main actors.
While his business has already taken him to the four parts of the world, he continues to travel the globe to discover new talents, particularly the young generation of Chinese artists. He now wishes to introduce these artists to the Western public, and thus share an artistic sensibility that has been ingrained in him since his beginnings.
John Dodelande, a businessman with an artistic sensibility…
John Dodelande has traveled around the world, including the new Silk Road countries, for his entrepreneurial activities. In turn designer, stylist, founder of a luxury group, real estate entrepreneur, and an elegant man for some, John Dodelande succeeds in everything he touches. His business has taken him to China, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, but also to Georgia, where he is now based.
In the course of his travels, John Dodelande has had the opportunity to cross paths with young Chinese artists who immediately echoed his sensitivity: “From a very young age, I noticed that I had a particular sensitivity for beauty and aesthetics in all fields: design, architecture, clothing, and of course, art in all its forms. At a certain point, it became almost vital for me, not to collect just “to become a collector”, but to live surrounded by the beauty of artworks that form a coherent environment and say something about the person I am or have become. A collection reveals the collector. I think it does for me.
Under the spell of this creative freedom and the energy of these young artists, he has gradually built up a collection of Chinese contemporary art, little by little, through encounters and thanks to a particularly sure taste, and sharpened it. The young Chinese artists touch him by their innovative approach, breaking with both an ancestral tradition and their famous elders of the new wave movement of the 80s or the so-called Cynical Realism movement.
“If I had to identify a common point in my collection, I would say that my choices always go towards works which – beyond the fact that I am very attentive to the technical and formal quality of the work – have a double or triple reading, where elements of poetry, humor, humanity are hidden, which are not necessarily readable at first sight, works and artists that have to be tamed and which end up being adopted”.
John Dodelande’s project: a database of Chinese contemporary art
John Dodelande explains: “Being a Digital Native myself, the world of social networking, digital tools are my “natural” environment, so to speak.
However, I very quickly had the feeling that I couldn’t find what I was looking for and that I was wasting a lot of time because I didn’t have at my disposal a real platform organized by type of market, by category of works, which would take into account the geographical and economic dimension, which are fundamental factors in understanding the market as a whole and its complexity”.
John Dodelande thus realized that contemporary Chinese art was little known in the West. This is why he came up an innovative tool, designed for both individuals and professionals: a selective database that would give access to the main Chinese artists and their works, which would allow their talent to be shown in the West.
