She: I’m thirsty. Do you think that water is free?
He: I dunno. There are lots of people in there, you better hurry.

Well, she had to go thirsty. There was no water in the bottles and the empty bottles were not free. Yet the punters were buying. One of the most eye-catching and most talked-about installations at Art Basel was the ShanghART Gallery exhibition, the ShanghART Supermarket by Xu Zhen. A typical Chinese convenience store was carefully set up in the gallery space at the Miami Convention Center, complete with freezer section, grooming products, cashier and register. The only problem was that each and every piece of packaging was exactly that: nothing but the package. The installation began as a fully stocked store, but the shelves were almost depleted by the last day of the show. Consumers and collectors were paying Shanghai prices for:

a) nothing
b) authentic Chinese packaging
c) part of an installation
d) Art Basel souvenirs
e) all of the above
f) none of the above
g) there are no correct answers

The beauty of collectors, consumption and conceptual art.