Sept. 5 (Bloomberg) -- A Swiss man with a tattoo of the Virgin Mary on his back, which was sold to a German art collector, will go on show for the first time next week at Shanghai's SHContemporary fair, said Wim Delvoye, the Belgian artist who created the work.

The tattoo on Tim Steiner, 32, took 35 hours to create and was sold last week by Jutta Nexdorf's gallery in Zurich for 150,000 euros ($214,320). The unidentified buyer has the right to sell Steiner's tattoo or remove it upon the bearer's death, Delvoye said.

``He will be the highlight of the fair,'' Delvoye said in a phone interview yesterday from Belgium. ``We've created a unique piece of art and a unique transaction and the world can see it for the first time'' at Xin Beijing Gallery's booth, he said.

SHContemporary is one of the five autumn art fairs in China trying to entice collectors to a market that's been crimped by the world's worst-performing equity index this year. Surging prices of works by Liu Xiaodong and other Chinese contemporary artists have slowed and auction sales have shrunk as a drop in China's equities erased $2.3 trillion in market value this year.

ArtBeijing 2008 opened in the Chinese capital today with a preview of works to be shown by 100 galleries, half of them China-based and the remainder from Asia, the U.S. and Europe. The fair's highlight, an inaugural show specializing in photographic art, features 15 galleries in 20 booths.

``The Chinese contemporary art market is going through an adjustment after a couple of years of spectacular and speculative buying,'' said the Beijing fair's director Dong Mengyang, in an interview in the capital. ``People who've bought artworks with their ears instead of their eyes are staying away, but genuine collectors are finding bargains in the market.''

The Beijing show is hoping to capitalize on the interest and tourism generated by last month's Olympic games in the city.

Guangzhou Triennial

Tomorrow, the southern city of Guangzhou previews its third triennial, titled ``Farewell to Post-Colonialism,'' which runs through Nov. 16 and draws 181 artists from 40 nations, according to the organizer's Web site. Four days later, another two-month triennial opens in the eastern city of Nanjing, this one themed ``Reflective Asia.''

The Shanghai fair, in its second year at the Shanghai Exhibition Center from Sept. 10-13, features 140 galleries from 25 countries, half of them from Asia and the remainder from Europe and America.

Delvoye is no stranger to controversy. His 2001 ``Euterpe'' resembles from a distance a cathedral window pane composed of tinted glass. The 2-meter work is actually a collage of 36 X-ray pictures, each the photograph of a Delvoye friend having sexual intercourse after being painted in radio-contrast barium sulfate.

No Live Pigs

His 2001 Cloaca machine replicated the human digestive system, producing rinds of feces that sold for 3,000 euros each in vacuum-packed bags. His plan to exhibit eight live pigs, each tattooed with the Walt Disney Co.'s characters and the Louis Vuitton motif, was rejected by SHContemporary's organizer.

``Live animals are not within our definitions of art,'' said SHContemporary's spokesman Chen Yimiu, in a phone interview today. ``Art is defined as representations on paper, canvass, film, video or other medium, not live animals.''

SHContemporary coincides this year with the Shanghai Biennale, which holds its opening ceremony on Sept. 8, and runs until Nov. 16. The event, based in the Shanghai Art Museum, examines our relationship with the urban environment at a time when China's booming cities are attracting more and more migrants from the countryside.

A centerpiece of the museum's exhibits is Yin Xiuzhen's ``Flying Machine,'' a vehicle created by welding together a tractor, a sedan, and an aircraft fuselage.

To contact the reporter on this story: Eugene Tang in Beijing on eugenetang@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: September 5, 2008 03:33 EDT