What’s Next for NFT Collectors After Pak and Beeple? art


Felix Xu adds a piece to the NFT art collection Chrome Wavyis generated by an algorithm. Today, 29-year-old Chinese technology executive Xu, more than 3,000 Blockchain-based collections. But there is a hole in his crypto wallet that he wants to fill with real tables. It has a budget of up to $500,000 and is already on the waiting list of in-demand artists who use paints and moving brushes. Zhang Zipiao .

In December, Xu, founder and CEO of start-up companies, Barley and Bella Protocoltoured the gallery stands of Art Basel Miami Beach, where dealers from David Zwirner and Pace Gallery are trying to lean towards the contemporary art market. He was looking for an education; They were looking for sales.

“I really admired all the sculptures and paintings,” Xu said in an interview, adding that the fair’s interest was from blue-chip modernists like Picasso, Nigel Cooke and Jessie Makinson.

Xu is among the growing number of NFT collectors looking to invest cryptocurrency in something tangible: a traditional art collection, starting with The painting he bought in January Renqian YangA Chinese artist living in New York.

Critics derided that a marriage between NFTs and the art world was impossible. But appealing to crypto nouveau riche tastes has become a wild obsession of the commercial art world; beep and pure He sold NFTs or non-redeemable tokens for tens of millions of dollars, inspiring the typically technophobic art industry to turn to the metaverse.

After all, among the NFT collectors circulating at Miami Art Week was an anonymous crypto collector known as Pete D., who purchased a tapestry by Le Corbusier in 1950. Boccara Art Before posting about “the weird and wonderful world of high-end physical art collecting”record. and Austin-based Rahilla Zafar, she made her first purchase at fairs, a painting by Matthew F. Fisher. Gallery.

“Galler said he is a great artist whose work is gaining value,” said Zafar, a documentarian and consultant for blockchain startups. To expensive NFT collections bored monkeys and CryptoPunks — where proof of ownership is stored on the Ethereum blockchain — has since added two dozen artifacts to its walls.

Credit…Rahilla Zafar

Art galleries go even further by embracing technology that threatens their business models, even when dealing with collectors from the meta-universe. Many have invested in digital platforms. Industry experts say it’s an opportunity for dealers to limit incentives for their artists to leave themselves as middlemen and sell their work independently.

“The art market is always looking for new space to expand, and the world of NFT is like the perfect transition medicine,” said Natasha Degen, head of art market research at the Fashion Institute of Technology. “Anyone involved in a highly volatile and speculative market like NFTs can have an easy time transitioning into the art world where the same dynamics occur.”

Sotheby’s only started selling NFTs last year, but the company said that 78 percent of all NFT bidders are new customers, with more than half of these bidders under the age of 40, with digital assets generating $100 million in sales.

“In the last three or four months, we’ve seen NFT collectors become more and more interested in physical art,” said Charles Stewart, managing director of the auction house, explaining that new collectors miss the context for their digital creations that art history has to offer.

(Competitor Christie’s says it brought in $150 million in NFT sales. Both auction houses are now doubling down on their crypto business. Sotheby’s, for example, joined NFT marketplace developer Mojito in a $20 million investment that helped auction the house last year. founded.)

Justin Sun, an early convert from the NFT community, tech entrepreneur and founder of cryptocurrency platform TRON, bought A $20 million Picasso at Christie’s auction last year. He continued his buying spree at Sotheby’s in November. With a $78.4 million acquisition 1947 Giacometti statue, “Le Nez.”

Sun’s art advisor was Sydney Xiong, who handled the process over the phone. Xiong helped the crypto billionaire build a collection of traditional and NFT artworks for the APENFT Foundation, a platform. he said will bridge the gap between the art world and the metaverse.

Saying that the couple had argued with the artist for three hours before bidding, Xiong said, “He didn’t know anything about Giacometti before the auction.” “I tried to educate him and make him know how important the party is and why we should have it.”

In November, the APENFT Foundation launched a $100 million fund to develop the talents of digital artists. More than 30 people are currently working for the foundation, which plans to showcase its physical and digital collection in Shanghai. Xiong said the foundation is now considering printing Giacometti and Picasso NFTs on the TRON blockchain, a cryptocurrency platform also created by Sun.

(In December, Sun said he would retire from TRON to promote the use of blockchain and crypto in Latin America.)

Many artists have moved to metadata with projects that combine digital and physical elements. Oftentimes, the accepted goal is to turn crypto wealth into art experts. Giving up furniture design and museum exhibits, artist Tom Sachs has a pet art project called “Rocket Factory” where users can purchase three separate stages of his digital NFT rocket ship; When the ship pieces are assembled, the artist launches a physical replica into the sky. Once recovered, the replica is sent to the owner in a private display box, and the online version is updated with metadata at launch.

Sachs described the project as transforming his studio into a “trans-dimensional manufacturing facility” where it produces 1,000 rockets. He has sold hundreds of rockets to art collectors and works extremely fast to complete everything.

“We have a development team in Portugal with contractors in South Africa and Germany,” he said. “I don’t know his real name – we hired a guy named CoolCat who has the keys to the studio.”

He also tried to persuade dealers and institutions to adopt the new technology. In November, the artist helped the Los Angeles County Museum of Art initiate an NFT acquisition from the “Rocket Factory” and guided the museum through the process.

“We hand-held them and taught them everything, and then we launched the rocket onto the LACMA campus,” Sachs said. The agency is in the process of deciphering the future protection of the NFT and the rocket.

If museums have warmly embraced NFTs, then art dealers are racing ahead. Pace Gallery was one of the first to adopt the digital market by hiring a museum curator Christiana Ine Kimba Boyle It was last spring to spearhead online sales efforts before introducing Pace Verso, its own platform dedicated to NFTs.

Art dealers and museums have long sought to impress Silicon Valley’s tech innovators as art enthusiasts. Pace was one of the first galleries to open there. Boyle said that crypto collectors are often drawn to aesthetic flair. “They’re interested in visuals,” Boyle said in an interview, adding that some are looking for the bright hues and cartoonish styles of what they see online.

Last year, the gallery helped artists like Lucas Samaras, Glenn Kaino, and Urs Fischer release tokens. According to Boyle, the program has helped bring crypto investors and avid collectors like Felix Xu into the gallery’s orbit.

Xu purchased NFTs from Fischer and Samaras before asking questions about artist Adam Pendleton, known for his large monochrome and conceptual paintings.

However, he remembers that Pace was the one to offer some advice on how to attract more NFT collectors for his traditional paintings and sculptures.

The NFT community is “looking for social engagement,” he said. He suggested that Pace should learn how to “growth hack” its business model by starting community events, creating sweepstakes, and offering products like free t-shirts – all techniques that drive the buying spree in the NFT world.

For dealers seeking next-generation art buyers, impressing NFT collectors like Xu is a long-term investment that may not continue to pay off. His taste is already evolving beyond the top-notch artists in Pace’s inventory. “These days I’m actively looking for emerging artists who have an avant-garde spirit and address critical real-life challenges.”

But will the marriage between NFTs and the art world last?

She has already produced an unusual offspring. Over the past year, Erick Calderon has gone from doing the ceramic tile business to becoming the king of Art Blocks, an NFT platform that claims to have generated more than $100 million in digital sales in 2021. Calderon made his fortune from his initial investment. CryptoPunks and created the series Chrome Squiggles (one of which Xu bought for over $1,000 as his first NFT artwork). In August, another of Calderon’s squiggles was resold for $2.5 million.

Calderon uses part of his fortune to create a collection of drawings by digital art pioneers such as Vera Mólnar, Manfred Mohr and Herbert W. Franke. And in October, he opened an exhibition space for his company in Marfa, Texas, where NFTs are presented like framed paintings on the wall. A last city council meeting Announcing Art Blocks got tense as the traditional artists involved began questioning the world of NFT.

Calderon said he is positive about the possibility of a future where the NFT community and the art world will coexist, and wants to continue to buy more traditional artworks.

“I said I would trade my CryptoPunks for a Donald Judd or James Turrell,” he said half-jokingly. “But no one has taken me on this offer – yet.”



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