Koons, one of the most sought-after living artists in the world, plans to install 125 miniature versions of these sculptures called “Moon Phases” along with their digital version in the form of NFT (virtual pieces) on the earth’s satellite. unique).
Buyers will also receive a life-size sculpture, studded with a gemstone to mark their location on the Moon.
“We discovered it for the first time, too,” enthuses Marc Glimcher, director of the gallery, as he introduces the 15.5-inch moon-shaped statue that has just arrived at his booth at the Basel fair.
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Pace is one of the few big galleries that have ventured into the NFT arena. According to Clare McAndrew, author of an art market report for Art Basel, only 6% of galleries sold these digital pieces in 2021.
Highly speculative, their prices soared after the sale last year at Christie’s auction house of an NFT by American artist Beeple for $69.3 million.
But after peaking in August 2021, when sales volume for these art pieces reached $945 million, the market has fallen to $366 million in January and $101 million in May, McAndrew says.
These ups and downs do not make the director of the Pace gallery hesitate, convinced that NFTs are a sign of a nascent market for digital art. For him, the situation is comparable to that of the Internet in the early 2000s.
“Of course, it was a bubble. But now we still have the internet,” argues Marc Glimcher, who sees in them a “new methodology for distributing digital art.”
For this edition, the organizers of the fair have allied themselves with the “blockchain” platform Tezos, which presents digital works by artists from which, thanks to automatic machine learning, new versions are generated in the form of NFTs.
Visitors can download one for free in their exhibition space, although some put them up for sale directly after they leave the fair.
At his side, the ViveArts platform proposes to immerse himself in the virtual world with the help of augmented reality glasses, especially with an avatar of the German artist Albert Oehlen in a 3D universe.
In the corridors of the fair, the French gallery Edouard Montassut offers a digital creation by the Turkish artist Özgür Kar with a man surrounded by three skeletons, reminiscent of church reliefs if it were not for the fact that it is represented on a liquid crystal screen ( LCD).
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“I think NFTs are going to have a place in the market of the future”said Marc Spiegler, director of Art Basel, even if prices have “recently plunged” at a time when artists are experimenting more with digital instruments.
Meanwhile, the physical works that wealthy collectors can place in their living rooms are again reaching big numbers: $40 million for a spider by French-American sculpture Louise Bourgeois or $12.5 million for a work by the Cuban-American conceptual artist. Felix Gonzalez-Torres.
“The atmosphere, despite the obvious complicated global context with the war in Ukraine and the general situation of the economy, is excellent”, celebrated the director of the fair.
The fair, which takes place from June 16 to 19 in this Swiss city, brings together a wide range of palpable works, from a gigantic bronze statue by the British artist Thomas J. Price to an installation by the Franco-Chinese artist Huang Yong Ping that represents a kitchen full of cockroaches.
Source: Ambito
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