Not to miss while at home: MoMa Exhibition history online!

If you’re looking for some good art to be comfortably enjoyed while at home, you’ll definitely like the impressive variety of artworks offered by MoMa on their website: 5,050 exhibitions from 1929 to the present are available online at the following link https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/history . Here some of our favourites in the theme of digital art!

1. Pixar: 20 Years of Animation

   In keeping with the Museum’s long tradition of presenting animation, this is the most extensive gallery exhibition that MoMA has ever devoted to the genre. Featuring over 500 works of original art on loan for the first time from Pixar Animation Studios, the show includes paintings, concept art, sculptures, and an array of digital installations. These works reveal the intricate, hands-on processes behind Pixar’s computer-generated films—including Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, and numerous shorts. The exhibition also includes a complete retrospective of Pixar films. Demonstrating the symbiotic relationship between traditional and digital media pioneered by the studio over its twenty-year history, Pixar: 20 Years of Animation is a tribute to the artists whose work has reinvented the genre.

Bob Pauley
Buzz
TOY STORY
Mixed Media

from Pixar at the Museum of Modern Art, 2005

2. Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today

Color Chart celebrates a paradox: the lush beauty that results when contemporary artists assign color decisions to chance, readymade source, or arbitrary system. Midway through the twentieth century, long-held convictions regarding the spiritual truth or scientific validity of particular colors gave way to an excitement about color as a mass-produced and standardized commercial product. The Romantic quest for personal expression instead became Andy Warhol’s “I want to be a machine;” the artistry of mixing pigments was eclipsed by Frank Stella’s “Straight out of the can; it can’t get better than that.” Color Chart is the first major exhibition devoted to this pivotal transformation, featuring work by some forty artists ranging from Ellsworth Kelly and Gerhard Richter to Sherrie Levine and Damien Hirst.

Installation View of the exhibition ‘Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today’ at MoMa.

3. Automatic Update

The dot-com era infused media art with a heady energy. Hackers, programmers, and tinkerer-revisionists from North America, Europe, and Asia developed a vision of art drawn from the technology of recent decades. Robotic pets, PDAs, and the virtual worlds on the Internet provoked artists to make works with user-activated components and lo-res, game-boy screens. Now that “new media” excitement has waned, an exhibition that illuminates the period is timely. Automatic Update is the first reassessment of its kind, reflecting the artists’ ambivalence to art, revealed through the ludicrous, comical, and absurd use of the latest technologies.

Installation View of the Exhibition ‘Automatic Update’ at MoMa.

Virtual Reality & Art

VIRTUAL REALITY:

An immersive technology experience that enables a person to interact with a computer-simulated environment, be it based on a real or an imagined place.

The term virtual reality was coined in the early 1980s by computer scientist Jaron Lanier and since then we’ve witnessed different ways (and attempts) of using it.

But VR became especially popular during the last years thanks to the new technologies available on the market (eg. Oculus Headsets) which make the virtual experiences more and more exciting - and useful!

If we think about art, we can see how artists, galleries and museums have been all started to use VR; museums and galleries have now the possibility to show their entire exhibitions and collections online allowing the public to feel like they’re visiting their spaces even if not in person but from anywhere in the world.

The dslcollection,  is an impressive example of a privately owned collection which is making use of VR as a powerful tool. The Collection was created in 2005 by Sylvain and Dominique Levy and focuses on contemporary Chinese art. “dslcollection distinguishes itself from other collections of contemporary Chinese art through a strict collecting concept. The collectors believe that  » The 21st century collector must think beyond established boundaries. » Therefore, dslcollection not only actively promotes the discovery and study of Chinese contemporary artistic production and but also makes use of the latest technologies. Tools such as the internet, interactive programs, virtual exhibitions and electronic books help dslcollection to achieve greater visibility and provide the means to share the experience of contemporary culture.Openness, the nomadic and sharing are core concepts of the dslcollection.”

Another great example is The Kremer Collection which comprises 17th century Dutch and Flemish Old Masters , and it’s owned and managed by the Aetas Aurea Holding SA (AAH), a non-profit organization. Their goal is ‘to make the collection known to a wider public through an active, international loan program as well as its innovative new Virtual Reality Museum and ‘to promote art to new generations of arts & culture lovers, using VR technology, through the Mighty Masters program’.

At the same time, artists are now using VR itself as a tool to create art and the outcome is simply great.
Nikita Shokhov is one of them, with his work ‘Klaxon’.

The project ‘Klaxon’ is a non-narrative non-linear VR experience, which uses a medium of a spherical image to express the idea of the multidimensionality of consciousness and identity of a modern person. In the center of the work is the image of a woman and her self-awareness played by several actresses of different ages and ethnicities. Contemplation of her thoughts and memories shows psychological work in the process of becoming of her real self. The goal of the chosen method is to apply the idea of “double consciousness” by W.E.B. Du Bois when a black person living in American society is forced to perceive herself from the perspective of an oppressive white person. The film depicts this conflict with the premise of the protagonist’s inner overcoming of “double consciousness”.

Kate Vass Galerie is proud to announce that a VR experience of the current exhibition will be soon available online, stay tuned!

Kate Vass Galerie is temporarily closed due to Coronavirus

Dear Friends,

We regret to inform you that following the latest decisions of the Swiss federal Government concerning the spread of Coronavirus, Kate Vass Galerie will be closed to public until further notice. We firmly believe that the safety and health of our clients and staff come first.

We thank you for your understanding and we are looking forward to welcoming you back as soon as possible.

In the meantime, you can always browse online the cryptoworks available on the blockchain & all the works featured in the current show and stay up to date following our blog page!

Warmly,

Kate Vass Galerie Team

Online Viewing Rooms & Digital Sales

Art Basel recently announced the first edition of Online Viewing Rooms, the new digital-only platform connecting galleries with collectors from around the world. According to the fair, the inaugural edition will go live soon on March 20, 2020:

Online Viewing Rooms will give visitors the opportunity to browse thousands of artworks presented by Art Basel participating galleries, many of which will be online exclusives. The Viewing Rooms will run in parallel to the three shows in Basel, Miami Beach, and Hong Kong. 

The initiative is the latest example of Art Basel’s longstanding commitment to digital technologies and to fostering a healthy artworld ecosystem by creating new ways for its galleries to reach collectors from across the globe. 

This is surely not the first initiative towards the commitment to the digital world: as a matter of fact, also mega -galleries like Gagosian and David Zwirner have already implemented their digital sales with the Online Viewing Rooms for the last couple of years - and they’ve been reporting strong results.

The art market is changing, and so are the ways of reaching out to new audiences. In the interdependent world in which we live nowadays, digital technologies represent an amazing tool with (still) a lot of underestimated potential.

We at Kate Vass Galerie are extremely proud to have developed our own online sales platform, allowing clients from all over the world to easily browse and purchase artworks even if they don’t get to see the exhibitions in person (no need to say that, sadly, that’s exactly what the art world is facing now due to the outbreak and spread of COVID-19). For more advanced users, we are also offering works for sale directly on the blockchain; in this case, each artwork has been tokenised on the the Ethereum blockchain as a non-fungible token (NFT) and you’ll be able to buy using ETH cryptocurrency.

Collecting digital art can be very engaging, seeing is believing!

Osinachi
Umunwoke Mama, 2020

Must-See Art Exhibitions in Zurich, Basel and Karlsruhe in museums that shape the scene of digital art!

Here is a list of 3 museums that shape the scene of digital art through their shows, commissions and acquisitions, as well as the promotion of innovative methods of curation and new forms of display and interaction with the public.

If you are currently in Europe or planning a trip to any above cities, make sure not to miss these cool art exhibitions!

• Raven Kwok @ MUDA in Zürich, Mar 7, 2020 – Jul 19, 2020

  Artist, animator and programmer, Raven Kwok researches aesthetics generated by algorithms and software processes.

  Flying in all the way from Shanghai, artist and metal music lover Raven Kwok will give an exclusive guided tour through his wonderful exhibition at the Opening event on Mar 7, 2020 at 17:00!

  Inspired by the likes of Yugo Nakamura and Eric Jordan, he taught himself how to program in ActionScript and started to create Flash animations in his teens. In 2008, Raven was introduced to Processing, which would become his preferred tool to build intricately layered systems.

  In his first solo-show in Europe, the 30-year-old artist will display six mostly interactive installations alongside algorithmically generated objects.

  More info can be found at the following link: https://muda.co/ravenkwok/

Algorithmic experiment on Inkee Wang’s Spaghetti

• bauhaus.film.expanded @ ZKM | Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, 08.02.2020 - 17.05.2020

  The exhibition »bauhaus.film.expanded« takes up the idea of total theater, which Bauhaus director Walter Gropius had designed for Erwin Piscator in 1926/1927. With the help of more than a dozen film projectors, he intended to »set the space under film«.

  Such multiple projections on different screens contain the visionary idea of extended forms of films. The projection in the cinema hall is 'extended' and enables immersion in a virtual, cinematic environment. The exhibition »bauhaus.film.expanded« uses large-scale projections to experience the spatial effect of the extended form of film practiced at the Bauhaus. The films of different lengths run in loops and – placed side by side and opposite each other – always play through new, different interrelations. An homage to the moving imagery of the Bauhaus!

  As one of the bravest image designers of the 20th century, Bauhaus professor László Moholy-Nagy programmatically placed technical vision with the aid of photography and film at the center of his reflections on »New Vision« – he spoke of painting with light instead of pigment. The many approaches developed at the Bauhaus range from abstract, absolute films, dance films and essayistic studies to reformist architectural and political documentaries, light projections, feature films in the theater, and cinema architecture.

  More info here: https://zkm.de/en/exhibition/2020/02/bauhausfilmexpanded

bauhaus.film.expanded @ ZKM | Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe

Last but not least, at HeK - House of Electronic Arts Basel do not miss the show

• Making FASHION Sense
  open until March 8th, 2020

  The Making FASHION Sense exhibition focuses on the fundamental transformation of creative processes in fashion through technology, as well as the artistic efforts towards more sustainability: fashion that makes sense.

  Robotic arms and mixed reality, holograms and drones have long appeared on the international catwalks. Hyperfunctional materials that monitor our biometric data are part of everyday life - especially in the field of sports. Making FASHION Sense deals with the radical transformation of fashion through technology.

  The exhibition explores technology as a transformative instrument for artists and designers who design clothing as well as for the wearer. Because clothes can encourage, cheer, comfort, or cause physical discomfort. Garments can reinforce uniformed monotony or stimulate artistic imagination. On show are artists and designers who develop experimental “augmented fashion” objects that stimulate a new perception of our environment, human interaction, and thought.

  How do programmable garments express our bodies? Does fashion technology change not only our movements, our well-being and our perception of our fellow human beings, but also our creative perspectives? Can fashion technology protect us from and in a dystopian future - or does it distort our perception of the world? Artists and designers show fashion that technology not only changes silhouettes, but also production systems. Based on sustainable production ethics, they develop new, more meaningful fashion semantics.

  Artists and designers: Alfatih, Salome Asega, Robbie Barrat, BioBabes, Hussein Chalayan, Carole Collet, Clara Daguin, Charleen Elberskirch, Clara Escalera, Ying Gao, Christope Guberan, Adam Harvey, Jun Kamei, Kazuya Kawasaki, Flora Miranda , Yuima Nakazato, Freya Probst, Ling Tan, TheKnitGeekResearch, Giulia Tomasello, Iris van Herpen.

  Curators: Sabine Himmelsbach and Katharina Sand

  More info on HeK website

Yuima Nakazato, Harmonize Collection, 2018, photo: Shoji Fujii

NEW NFTs by OSINACHI NOW AVAILABLE IN KVG STORE ON THE BLOCKCHAIN

New In! We are happy to announce that brand new artworks by artist Osinachi are now available as NFTs for sale on the blockchain. You can find them all in our store at the following link:
superrare.co/kate_vass

Osinachi
AM, 2019

Osinachi took Microsoft Word, a word processing tool with 1.2 billion users globally, and found a new way to use it as a tool for making digital art that none of us have seen before. Through sheer effort, imagination, and creativity, Osinachi brings virtuosity to what most people overlooked or cast aside as a crude tool for making basic shapes and patterns. Osinachi’s textures and color palettes sing out and demand attention. Inspired by the textiles found in Nigeria, they feel more like a rich collage of vibrant fabrics than a screen full of cold lifeless pixels. The fearless creative energy and positivity of Osinachi’s aesthetic extend seamlessly into the subject matter of his work.

Like all great artists, Osinachi is a mirror of his times, and the topics he addresses -- from environmentalism to racism and single parenthood -- resonate far outside the borders of Nigeria. He is a reminder of what art and artists can be for us all when they are performing at their best and fulfilling their most important function within our increasingly global culture.

Osinachi
I, Too, Need Watering, 2020

LUMEN PRIZE Call For Entries Open!

The Lumen Prize for Art and Technology celebrates the very best art created with technology through a global competition, exhibitions and events worldwide run by Lumen Art Projects. The annual juried competition draws entries from artists globally and has given away more than US$80,000 in prize money since its launch in 2012. Lumen Art Projects, a not-for-profit based in the UK, is dedicated to providing opportunities for artists who engage with technology globally through links with cultural venues, festivals and institutions globally.

ONLINE ENTRY FORM FOR ARTISTS HERE
Deadline: Fri 8 May 2020 12:00 GMT

Additional Info below:

Still Image Award Winner 2019

Drawing Operations

Sougwen Chung

Drawing Operations (Duet) is a performance centered on a drawing collaboration between human and machine.

In this duet, Sougwen and Drawing Operations Units: Generation 1&2 create an improvised drawing corresponding to 3 themes, tracing a narrative of human and machine; Mimicry, Memory and Future Speculations.

Sougwen Chung
Work in Progress

PwC: Blockchain & Law - An afternoon with the global legal and academic experts @ TRUST SQUARE

Yesterday we joined the PwC „Blockchain & Law“ event at TRUST SQUARE in Zürich for an afternoon with the global legal and academic experts!

The business community is rapidly recognising that blockchain goes way beyond cryptocurrencies. Many are predicting that before long, smart contracts will have transformed interactions between the different economic players in ecosystems – in fact the entire way we do business.

Once again the thought-provoking afternoon featured some of the leading minds in blockchain, including Prof. Dr. Philipp Sandner, Head of the Frankfurt School Blockchain Center as well as PwC’s legal, financial services and digital experts Dr. Günther Dobrauz, Tina Balzli, Priit Lätt and Frederik Gregaard. Marina Niforos, Logos Global Advisors and Member EU Blockchain Observatory, was supposed to attend too, but unfortunately she had to cancel.

When talking about tokenisation of assets purely on-chain, we firmly believe art can be one. As a matter of fact, the artist duo John Watkinson & Matt Hall from Larva Labs brilliantly developed Autoglyphs: the first “on-chain” generative art on the Ethereum blockchain, they are a completely self-contained mechanism for the creation and ownership of an artwork.

Autoglyphs are an experiment in generative art, each one unique and created by code running on the Ethereum blockchain. A glyph can be created by anyone who is willing to donate the creation fee of 0.20Ξ ($51) to a selected charity, 350.org. The creator of the glyph will then also become the first owner of the glyph. However, after 512 glyphs have been created, the generator will shut itself off forever and the glyphs will only be available on the secondary market.

Now that the artists have deployed the project to Ethereum, it is important to note that they no longer control the code that generates the art, nor the code that manages the ownership of the glyphs. This is a crucial difference from art that is normally editioned and sold. It allows a long-term guarantee of ownership, provenance and edition size that is independent of any central authority.

The work will be exhibited in May in Montreal during ISEA2020, the International Symposium on Electronic Art, one of the world’s most prominent international arts and technology events, which brings together scholarly, artistic, and scientific domains in an interdisciplinary discussion and showcase of creative productions applying new technologies in art, interactivity, and electronic and digital media.

John Watkinson & Matt Hall
Autoglyph #36, 2019
40 x 40 cm
Unique

NEW SHOW! OSINACHI - EXISTENCE AS PROTEST

We are happy to announce a brand new upcoming exhibition at Kate Vass Galerie in Zürich!

OSINACHI - EXISTENCE AS PROTEST
Solo show by Osinachi, Africa’s foremost cryptoartist

Osinachi
The Bridge, 2019

Osinachi took Microsoft Word, a word processing tool with 1.2 billion users globally, and found a new way to use it as a tool for making digital art that none of us have seen before. Through sheer effort, imagination, and creativity, Osinachi brings virtuosity to what most people overlooked or cast aside as a crude tool for making basic shapes and patterns. Osinachi’s textures and color palettes sing out and demand attention. Inspired by the textiles found in Nigeria, they feel more like a rich collage of vibrant fabrics than a screen full of cold lifeless pixels. The fearless creative energy and positivity of Osinachi’s aesthetic extend seamlessly into the subject matter of his work.

Like all great artists, Osinachi is a mirror of his times, and the topics he addresses -- from environmentalism to racism and single parenthood -- resonate far outside the borders of Nigeria. He is a reminder of what art and artists can be for us all when they are performing at their best and fulfilling their most important function within our increasingly global culture.

Osinachi
What do they know about Innocence, 2019

- - -

Osinachi (born Prince Jacon Osinachi Igwe, 24 October 1991) is a self-taught digital artist whose work explores personal experiences within a technological environment.

The artist, who grew up in Aba, Nigeria, produces drawings using Microsoft Word, where he utilizes the basic limited design palette of the word processing software to create narrative illustrations. 

Osinachi
Be Kind, 2020

Africa’s foremost cryptoartist, Osinachi‘s works are further registered in the blockchain and sold as non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

In 2018, he became the first-ever Nigerian artist to showcase artworks at the Ethereal Summit, a conference in New York that seeks to bridge the gap between technology and art through blockchain.

Fresh start! Fresh Art! New magazine by Kate Vass Galerie Ed. March-May 2020 is out now!

Osinachi
Nduka’s Wedding Day, 2019

I hope one of your New Year resolution was to upgrade or start your art collection. A few new pieces can totally transform a space, or maybe you will discover with us the beauty of collecting digital.

 In this edition, we share with you plenty of interesting material: the unique works Africa’s foremost cryptoartist Osinachi – from his solo show opening to public from 10th March 2020 at Kate Vass Galerie in Zürich; The article “The Tools of Generative Art, from Flash to Neural Networks” written by Jason Bailey for Art in America, Jan. 8, 2020 ; interviews and articles with artists, and the new section ‘Editors’ Choice’ with exclusive works by Kevin Abosch.

Order your digital version here or pre-order the hard copy which will be shipped to you! 

Opening of ART RUSSIA and NEW WORKS BY KEVIN ABOSCH on 20th February 2020!

Happy to announce that I will be speaking at the ART RUSSIA https://artrussiafair.com/en/ on 22th February 2020 at 12.30 at Gostinny Dvor, Moscow, Russia. The art fair opens its doors on 20th Feb, followed by 2 days of program full of different panel discussions, curatorial projects and multiple presentations by various international speakers: Sylvain Levy, Elena Zavelev, Joachim Pissarro, Christina Steinbreher, Jeffrey 
Taylor and many more. “Art Market Disruption”, topic where I talk about how new technologies transform, support and shape art market, highlighting such brands as Artory.com, The Kremer Collection, opensea.io, artnome.com, Art Recognition, Smartify and more as we go through the era of the technological transformation.

At the same art fair, our dear artist Kevin Abosch will be presenting his new works from his eponymous upcoming book “Nascent Space 2019–2020”.

Only few prints will be exhibited, but here is more information about this new exciting project.

“Nascent Space”

STUDIO KEVIN ABOSCH

The scientific method moves from a hypothesis to an experiment and ultimately yields a result. It’s understandable that scientists and technologists are result-driven. It is the result that yields the empirical data that speaks to an experiment’s success and failure. Indeed, the very reputation of the scientist and the technologist is a function of presenting results to their peers. My own interest in the scientific method has waned over the years. Empirical data can be of great practical use, but as an artist I’m more interested in process, ritual and insights gleaned long before the result.

With respect to deep-learning algorithms, I force complications by limiting and corrupting the input data. What would ordinarily comprise the latent space is sublimated into what I call “nascent space.” Nascent space exists within a gaussian, or normal distribution of data but holds the prima materia from which discovery and creation are born. It is in this nascent space that I find truths not necessarily apparent within results.

kevinabosch.com

- KEVIN ABOSCH

We hope to see you at the fair, please follow us on Twitter and Instagram to stay up to date: @katevassgalerie

Frieze Los Angeles opens for public today on Saint Valentine's Day!

Held at Paramount Studios from February 14-17th with over 70 galleries on show, Frieze Los Angeles may only be in its second year, but it's already a clear staple on the cultural calendar.

Explore the world’s leading galleries alongside special projects from ground-breaking artists.

From the preview days, here are the works Kate Vass Team liked the most:

David Zwirner Gallery

Diana Thater

Natural History (#2), 2020

Five (5) flat screen video monitors and two (2) LED light fixtures

105 1/2 × 104 3/8 in

268 × 265.1 cm

Metro Pictures

Trevor Paglen

CLOUD #902 Scale Invariant Feature Transform; Watershed, 2019

Dye sublimation metal print

49 1/2 × 64 in

125.7 × 162.6 cm

AF Projects

Tavares Strachan

Sometimes Lies are Prettier, 2017

Blue neon, transformers

20 × 95 × 8 in

50.8 × 241.3 × 20.32 cm

With more than a third of the galleries on show based in LA, the fair prides itself on having a local focus. One of this year’s highlights includes a collaboration of Pace Gallery and Kayne Griffin Corcoran are joining forces on the Paramount lot to show new immersive work by the artist James Turrell , with an immersive LED ceiling installation and four of his famous light works on display. 

Turrell’s work has found a major following in the entertainment world. Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen recently installed one of his works at their new The Row store in London. Leonardo DiCaprio once called a Perpetual Cell piece by Turrell, which was shown at LACMA, “one of the most existential experiences I’ve ever had as an observer,” while Drake mimicked the artist’s oeuvre in the video for his song “Hotline Bling.” Last year, Kanye West donated $10 million to support the completion of the artist’s monumental Roden Crater project, in which he is transforming a volcanic cylinder in the Northern Arizona desert into a naked-eye observatory. West also filmed his movie Jesus Is King at the site.

Pace Gallery

James Turrell

Aquarius, Medium Circle Glass, 2019

L.E.D. light, etched glass and shallow space

71 × 53 in

180.3 × 134.6 cm

more information: https://frieze.com

New ambitious exhibition, The Supermarket of Images at Jeu de Paume Museum, Paris.

On the 10th Februrary, I had a pleasure to attend new ambitious exhibition, The Supermarket of Images at Jeu de Paume, Paris. Thanks for the invitation from our dear friend artist Kevin Abosch who also exhibits at the “ Values” section with two of his artworks “ IAMACOIN” and “Personal Effects (2018). 

The whole show is striking in terms of its purpose, originality, the multidisciplinary nature and its scale, since it occupies the entire exhibition space. A first for the institution, I guess thanks to the new director Quentin Bajac, former chief curator of photography at MoMA. 

 The Supermarket of Images, aims to show and reflect on what images are today, particularly through their economic, social and ecological impact.

The main curator Peter Szendy, Professor of Comparative Literature and Humanities at Brown University, as well as Emmanuel Alloa and Marta Ponsa did an amazing job. 

In “Le Supermarche du Visible” the book written by Peter Szendy, from which the exhibition is inspired, the economic aspect of the life of images is called “iconomy”.
The works and artists chosen for the exhibition cast a keen and watchful eye over these issues. On the one hand, they reflect the upheavals that currently affect the economy in general, whether in terms of unprecedentedly large storage spaces, the scarcity of raw materials, labour and its mutations into intangible forms, or in terms of value and its new manifestations, such as cryptocurrencies.

 A selection of multi-disciplinary works has therefore been arranged, as a journey through a "supermarket of images" where each piece is positioned at the crossroads of these questions. Through 5 major sections: "Stocks", "Materials", "Work", "Values" and "Exchanges", the visitor will then be able to reflect on the impact that images have today. By including an older work in each section, it demonstrates that some of the burning questions are up to date.  However, the impact they have on our way of life and communication, makes us fully appreciate the modernity of exhibition’s purpose. 

More information you can find here  http://jeudepaume.org/pdf/Petit-Journal-Lesupermarchedesimages.pdf 

The exhibition is open from 11.02.2020 - 7.06.2020 

Kate Vasilieva & Curator Peter Szendy

Personal Effects, 2018
Projet IAMA COIN

Kevin Abosch & Kate Vasilieva

Andrei Molodkin YES, 2007 Sculpture and Thomas Ruff Substrat 8 II, 2002 at the back

Aram Barthol Are You Human?, 2017

László Moholy-Nagy Construction en émail 1, 2 et 3 (Telephone Pictures)

Sophie Calle, Cash Machine, 1991-2003 installations

Valentine's Day Gift Guide from Kate Vass Team!

Dear Friends, 
With Valentine's Day nearly approaching, we've put together a selection of works by David Young to inspire that special someone in your life with something very extraordinary and beautiful. David Young’s work was recently featured on the cover of Espace magazine,DU MAGAZINE and DAS MAGAZIN DER VOLKSWAGENSTIFTUNG. His current work explores how beauty and aesthetic experiences can give a fresh start to how we think about artificial intelligence.

This work, which uses AI/machine learning, is a return to his roots where he began at the height of the 1980’s AI boom.

Flowers

AI / Machine Learning generated images. 2018-2019.

Using AI & machine learning the computer was trained with photographs that Davidtook of flowers athisfarm in Bovina, NY during the summer of 2018. It then generated its own images. Nothing that emerges is accurate, but the work isn’t asking for accuracy — it’s asking for the machine to build its own unique vision of the natural world.

The work is part of theLearning Nature project. For more information see the essay Little AI

NEW MEDIA ART Best practices from the artist's perspective by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

I think this is a great article written by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer 4 years ago still, to my opinion, demonstrates the best practice in terms of creating, collecting and preserving new media art.

RAFAEL LOZANO-HEMMER · SEPTEMBER 28, 2015

Dear colleague,

For most artists I know “Art conservation” is a troubling affair: we are already too busy maintaining operations as it is, we think of our work as a “living” entity not as a fossil, we are often unsure if a project is finished, we snub techniques that may help us document, organize or account for our work as something that stifles our experimentation and creative process. In addition, especially when we are resentful that institutions are not collecting and preserving our work in the first place, we reject the whole concept of an Art collection, —agreeing with critical historians for whom collecting and preserving contemporary Art represents an obsessive-compulsive vampiric culture of suspended animation and speculation that is grounded in a neo-colonial, ostentatious, identitarian drive: Nietzsche’s “will to power” mixed with Macpherson’s “possessive individualism”.

For this text let’s assume you are already at peace with the contradiction that is conservation: you are now interested in both creating the work and overseeing its death or zombiefication. Perhaps despite being a staunch democratic socialist you now have your own Art collection. Or maybe you have met a few collectors who take risks with you, acquire your work and help keep your studio afloat financially. Most importantly, especially if you are an insecure megalomaniac like me, you don’t want to disappear from history like so many great artists who are not collected by important Museums.

So here we are, thinking about the topic of conservation in media art. As you know, there is a plethora of existing initiatives to preserve media artworks, but these are always from the perspective of the institutions that collect them. While most institutional programs include excellent artist-oriented components like interviews and questionnaires, the programs are all a posteriori, almost forensic, as they look at the work in retrospect, as a snapshot of time.

This text is written to outline what artists may choose to do on the subject in order to i) simplify our life in the long run, ii) generate income, and iiii) take ownership of the way our work will be presented in the future. I welcome variations, additions and comments. Yes, it is absolutely unfair for the artist to have to worry about conservation of their work. Now let’s get on with it.

BEFORE MAKING

• Mistrust anyone who has a “method” for conservation of Media Art. Anyone, such as myself, who offers a set of rules is someone who is not considering the vast range of disparate experiences, methods, constraints and dependencies that can arise even within the work of a single artist. All we can do is suggest a bunch of tips, wait for an artist to prove those tips useless, and then review the tips.

• Study instruction-based art, in particular Moholy-Nagy “Construction in Enamel 2”, his 1923 painting reportedly ordered over the telephone, and then study the instructions of established artists who pushed and are pushing the boundaries of the art of instructions like Sol LeWitt, Felix González Torres and Tino Seghal. Citing these precedents, and Duchamp of course, will immediately relax the concerns that may arise with your own work’s materiality because this discussion already has been happening in the artworld for a hundred years.

• Study precedents of technological art. I find that underlining connections between my work with historical experimental traditions is much more productive (and honest) than pretending what I do is “new”. Quote meaningful precedents that allow the collector to contextualize your work. For example, I often cite the pioneering use of radio broadcast technology by the Estridentista poets in Mexico in the 1920s, or the first use of neon lighting by Gyulia Kosice in 1946, or the first use of a live video feed in art installation by Marta Minujín in 1965 (50 years ago! How can we pretend what we do is “new” media?).

• Decide if the work you are about to make will be a one-off ephemeral performance, a computer virus that is meant to multiply in ways you cannot control, a happening that is so site- and time- specific that it can never be owned, restaged or reproduced. If you decide this is the case then do not ever think about conservation, not once, and work with reckless abandon with the certainty that the death of your creation may be the highest form of beauty and experience. Some voyeur, flâneur, dilettante, opportuniste (or other person who can be described with a French word) will try to capture your piece and sell it or get a PhD, but really all that does is say “you had to be there”. If on the other hand you are interested in conserving the specific work you are making right now then read on.

WHILE MAKING

• Keep a notebook and/or electronic document where you put any sketches, prototypes, parts lists, bits of research on the project.

• Work in any development platform you feel is best for the project or for you, but if you have a choice always go for open source tools. At my studio we have often used closed commercial systems, such as “FaceAPI” for face recognition and “Shout3D” a proprietary online 3D API, only for the companies to go bankrupt or orphan the software leaving us with the task to re-engineer the work with more open equivalents (OpenCV in one case and Google Earth in the other).

• Consider using versioning systems, like Git. These allow your software projects to be traceable incrementally and they are a great repository for fundamental information on how a project evolves. Of course code can and should have comments to help follow the code, but Git gives conservators a more global view. In my studio we are only now starting to use Git but I really wish we had started earlier. Versioning is important also in schematics, prototypes and manuals. In fact the whole idea of Versioning can be applied to the artwork itself as suggested in the next section.

• Your software is your “score”, the fundamental instructions that create your work, so back it up! At my studio we have a less than stellar system, which is basically a central repository of files in a drive which gets mirrored to an identical drive that is offsite. I also run Apple’s time machine in my laptop to two drives: one at the studio and one at home. I do recommend a cloud-based solution as it can scale up, is (almost) always available and is cost-effective; however, you do need to feel comfortable that a corporation has your data (they always do anyhow) and that you can continue paying monthly fees, which is a big if. Some Museums are starting to have dedicated servers to hold all of their software collections, in the future all Museums will have to have this kind of data repository and conservation will be very linked to IT. If you keep your own server with all your data this may eventually also be co-located at a place for archives such as a particularly forward-looking library.

• As you work, say on a complex installation with hardware, software, manufactured and found components, prepare a “Bill of materials” (BoM), which is basically a list of all components of a piece. List each separate component, writing its brand and model, its function, the URL for information, and a small picture.

• Next to each item in your BoM, write whether the element is replaceable or irreplaceable. An irreplaceable element is for example a Nixie tube that you feel is crucial to the look or functioning of the final piece. If future conservators can’t find an exact replacement the piece should have an honourable death. A replaceable element is everything else; but for every replaceable element there should be notes on what is acceptable, e.g. “this motor can have any specification so long as it fits in the cavity and it can spin the mechanism 5 times a second” or “this screen can be any CRT, LCD, LED, OLED or other technology provided it is between 15 and 17 inch diagonal, has a brightness of around 500 nits and can show XGA resolution” or “this cover is made of acrylic but it can be changed for glass so long as it is tempered and can stand the vibration, please do not use polycarbonate as that is not transparent enough”.

• When choosing hardware, try to limit any moving parts as much as possible, these are the parts that tend to fail most over time. An example is using solid state rather than spinning platter hard disks or heat sink cooling instead of fans. Another example is using a solid-state relay instead of a contact switch. A final example is choosing a wide-angle camera with virtual pan and tilt using region of interest rather than a motorized pan/tilt camera.

• If you have a choice, use “off the shelf” components that are abundant. At my studio we developed our own computer vision tracking systems using industrial cameras for 15 years but now we have moved to Microsoft Kinect2 whenever possible as these are readily available. Another example is microcontrollers, as my studio now mostly develops with Arduinos, which are widespread, open and friendly. Your own developed systems of course should be used if they deliver better results, but then you need to document those appropriately.

• Make global choices in your procurement. For example, choose gear that can function in a range of voltages 100-240V ideally with auto-switching circuitry; or if you are Canadian never use Robertson screws despite how great they are, as no one outside of our proud country has drill bits for this screw head. All your measurements should be metric and all your notes in English (yeah, I said that).

• Program an “Idle mode” and/or an automatic shutdown for your piece. Collectors sometimes just leave a piece operating while they go on a holiday for two months. You need to detect if no one has interacted with the piece for a certain time for it to go into an Idle state that stops or slows down motors, shuts down or dims displays, and in general protects the piece. An auto shutdown is another way to save the piece unnecessary cycles, but ensure that you have a programmable power bar so that all hardware is turned off in the right sequence.

AFTER MAKING

• Make a video of the project, ideally with you speaking over it and explaining proper functioning. If you are shy then get someone to interview you.

• Install the project in a variety of computers, operating systems and/or devices and test for any SW or HW dependencies. Note these very carefully in a “Read Me” document that is in a way a version of the BoM for hardware. Bundle the Read Me file with installers for every single item in the list. For example include operating system, DirectX, any graphics drivers, APIs, programming environments, etc.

• Prepare one or several flash drives with all the source code for your project, including firmware, binaries, media assets, schematics, 3D print files, EVERYTHING. Then add all the installers for the dependencies from the previous point. These flash drives are meant to be like a time capsule that hold all the instructions required to reproduce the work. Do include a document that explains that they should make a backup copy of the contents of the flash drive and ensure the integrity of the data from time to time.

• Write a manual with the following parts: i) a “meta” narrative describing the key concepts and elements of the piece and how it works; ii) a detailed set-up procedure, including pictures of example installations, wiring diagrams, museographic notes such as desired lighting or acoustic conditions, sample layouts showing what is and is not allowed; iii) maintenance section on how to clean the piece and turn it on and off; iv) preservation section with the Bill of materials, all schematics, comments to the code.

• Set your computers to perform uninterrupted for a long time. Ensure you are not defeating fans so it is cooled properly, no screen savers, disable automatic software updates for operating system and java for example, no virus checkers, monitor temperature inside boxes or enclosures, stop all notifications, stop all login passwords, etc.

• Prepare a toolkit with any drill bits, special tools, adapters and with spares of components that you think are most hard to come by.

DEALING WITH A COLLECTOR

• Take the video, the flash drives, the manual, the toolkit and the spares and make a BOX. Give the box to the collector explaining how important it is and warn them that replacing it will cost $750 (or choose a number that is profitable). Many collectors will quickly lose this box. When they come to you asking for a replacement make a buck for godsakes.

• Explain the concept of digital copy to your collector. Most do not understand that an original file is identical to a copy. And if they do, they are so completely absorbed with the aura of authenticity that I have heard of artists having to destroy a digital file once they print copies of a digital picture. This is absolutely absurd and unnecessary for work like mine (and yours). If a collector buys an image from me I want to give her the Tiff file with colour looking tables and printing instructions so that she can reproduce the work in the future when the UV rays wash the colours out or when a child takes a knife to the image. So long as you copy the data from the flash drive onto other future media, as USB dies, the work that you own will be perfectly reproducible, like the instructions of a Sol LeWitt or a Gonzalez-Torres. In this sense, digital prints are orders of magnitude easier to preserve than any other print.

• Once the collector understands that they have the digital files needed to reproduce most or all of the work they might panic asking how their investment is protected from reckless reproduction. The answer is centuries old: with a signature. For each of my pieces I give a certificate of authenticity that is the tradable commodity of my work. In my case, the certificate is an A5-sized doubly anodized aluminium ingot that shows the details and picture of the work. I sign the certificate by hand, adding the edition number. The certificate is also engraved with our studio numbering system, has three digital watermarks and soon it will also have a blockchain unique signature. This is what you keep in the safety deposit box as it is completely irreproducible. If you do not have this certificate the piece you have is completely worthless. This certification system is retroactive, and we are slowly giving one of these for each piece acquired in the past. Running a personal certification system also has the side benefit of protecting you from potential fraud from gallerists or intermediaries who may be reproducing your work behind your back. This has not happened to me but I have heard many stories. Another benefit of personal certification is that if the collector does not pay you in full you simply do not hand-over the certificate. He or she may have the work after paying an advance, but the purchase is not complete until the work is fully paid and the collector is in possession of the unique certificate.

• Unless the piece is very simple, the price of acquisition of a work should include an honorarium for you or a technician to help with installing the work on site (what is not included in the acquisition price is the flight, accommodation and per diem for you or the technician). Make it clear to the collector that their installers need to follow your instructions on how to hang the work physically, run the wires and provide electricity. You cannot do those things because you are not insured. You are there only to supervise and to calibrate the system.

• Once you or your technician calibrate the work, show it to the collector, teach them how to turn it on and off and clean it. Then ask them who you should train for a full technical run through of the piece, e.g. the collector herself if she is nerdy, her installer, the IT department, the conservator of the collection, etc. Do a complete walk through of the work with this person and show them the manuals, spare parts, and so on. This person will be the first one that the collector will go to when the work malfunctions so he or she is very important for your own peace of mind. Once you have trained the collector and the technical person, make them sign a document that simply says that the work has been installed to their liking, that they received training on the operation, maintenance and preservation of the piece.

• Install VNC or, better, LogMeIn and explain how you can log in remotely to fix problems if needed. Show the collector how to disconnect the piece to the net if they want privacy. Depending on how fancy the work is, you can consider also using networked power bars to cycle the power remotely if necessary.

• Have the collector install surge protection and grounding to the power that is supplied to the piece. Many problems we have seen throughout the years come from bad power: fixing a burnt transformer is often a tedious and expensive job and often the circuitry is also affected.

• Talk about maintenance. To the best of your ability give a specific Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) estimate, which is basically the time it will take for components to break, on average. For example if the piece has a projector quote the number of hours that it will work for before a bulb needs to be changed and specify how much that will cost to replace. I typically use two metaphors to explain maintenance on a media artwork, depending on the collector and situation: 1) The artwork is like a car, —you should drive it from time to time, change the oil and tune it, but the more you drive it the more it will it cost to preserve; and 2) The work is like a fountain, —you have a capital investment but then there is a maintenance budget for changing rusty valves, chlorinating the water, etc.

• Talk about warranty. You should let the collector know about whatever warranty there is on the individual components of the piece, for example a computer usually has a 1-year warranty. But you should under no circumstances guarantee that the work will function a given amount of time. You are not a corporation, you do not control the conditions of the exhibition or the handling of the piece after you depart. The spirit of giving the collector all schematics, software and code, plus the training, spare parts and manuals, is that you are now delegating conservation to his or her collection. When the collector is uncomfortable about the lack of warranty clarify the technical support you are willing to give.

• Providing technical support can be a nightmare in Media Art. Not providing it is even worse. If a piece fails the collector needs to know exactly who to call and have a support network. If they don’t it is possible they will never invest in media art again. Often artists make networks that include their galleries, trusted technicians or AV companies. In our case here is what we ask the collectors to do in case of failure:

  i) Read the manual. Over 95% of failures are something simple like a power cable that is not nestled in fully.

  ii) Contact the installer who was trained by you or your technician, he or she should be able to troubleshoot at a higher level.

  iii) Contact the gallery in case they have a technician who can help.

  iv) Call or email my studio and we will try to fix the problem remotely for free, over the phone and remote login if available.

  v) If the problem is not solved, we are happy to go on site to solve it. The costs are: return flight for you or the technician to go to the city, accommodation and per diem, any parts that needed replacement, and $750, or some other daily fee you establish, for honorarium. Please note a travel day is charged at half the daily rate. It is my experience that collectors rather get direct support from the artist studio even if that may be costly. This money helps the studio maintain operations and instead of technical support being a nightmare it is now a source of income.

• Provide a migration path and explain versioning for artwork. When collectors acquire a media artwork they need to know they are getting an “event-based” living piece that is closer to a performing arts commission than a traditional visual artwork. Many conservators understandably cringe at the possibility of an artwork changing over time, but that is exactly what Media Art should aspire to do. In an epic conversation with Tate expert and friend Pip Laurenson, I realized that what she was after was completely different but not entirely incompatible with what I envisioned. Tate acquired my work “Subtitled Public” made in 2005. In this work you enter an empty room, are tracked by computerized surveillance, and a random verb is projected on your body which follows you everywhere, —the only way to get rid of the word is to touch somebody and exchange words with him or her. The project was written in Delphi, using firewire cameras, IR illuminators and XGA projectors. Using an impressive and comprehensive method Pip ensured that the piece that is at Tate can be performed using these original technologies, giving the public a snapshot of what computerized tracking was like in 2005. So far so good. Ten years later there are hardly any Delphi programmers, firewire is dead, projectors now have over 10x the pixel resolution and Kinect2 tracking is orders of magnitude faster, more accurate and easier to install. I am now planning a migration path for “Subtitled Public” to work with these new technologies because this particular project is not about the specific tracking and projection used but about the experience of words branding the public. I am eager to see the project in a second version because the experience will be more ominous. The cost for this migration is relatively low, especially if you consider that you would not need to stockpile older gear or interpret Delphi code. Versioning is almost as if a collector buys a piece of software for an initial amount, then the artist improves this over time (in a way the artist provides a Conservation path for the artwork) and charges a small upgrade fee. Like in industry, versioning can also be a source of income for the studio. Of course in the future Tate can choose to exhibit either version or both. It depends on the show. The key is not to think that both these approaches are mutually exclusive. Obviously, the artist cannot go and offer version 2 to a different collector, a migration is available only to the collector who originally acquired the work.

• Versioning should end with the death of the artist unless you leave specific instructions on what you need your estate to accomplish (like Gonzalez-Torres did).

• A collector should be free to decline migrating their piece along the artist or estate suggested path. If in the future the piece is acquired by a different party the new owners can decide to pursue a migration. Should the collector attempt to preserve the work with a migration path that is egregious and not approved by the artist or estate the title of the work will be automatically void and the artist will be able to sell it again (I learnt this from James Turrell’s practice! It so smart: you need to be protected from someone adding or taking away an element to the piece that you did not approve of).

FINAL NOTES

• Trust conservators! They are absolutely fundamental for your work to have a future performance. They also have a lot of experience in preserving the most diverse things you can imagine. Establish a dialog with them and work out a migration plan, they tend to be relieved when the artist has thought through these issues. Above all you don’t want the collector to think they are acquiring a future conservation problem (though admittedly every work, even a painting is a future conservation problem).

• Trust curators, but not as much as conservators. In the future the curator is the person who will stage your work in a variety of different contexts. Try to explain in your documentation what is and is not possible with the work. Many curators are sadly too rushed to read manuals, which is why you must trust conservators more.

• Keep a website! For each piece that I have ever made I have a webpage with videos, photos, descriptions, bibliography and most important: the manual for the work in PDF and a list of credits of the people who worked on the project. Giving public credit to engineers, programmers, and other assistants is an honest thing to do but is also a way for future conservators to track projects by different coding styles, for example.

• This final note is not for everyone, but it is something that makes sense for my work: In my upcoming monographic show in Mexico City’s MUAC Museum we will publish a USB flash drive which will contain absolutely all the source code and schematics of every single artwork on display (there are 42 pieces!). We already have a GitHub account where we share some of our programming to the open source community, but this new idea is designed to be more radical. We want to make software and methods something more dialogical, less precious, more open, more viral. If my servers crash and no museum has backup copies my work will already be in the forks of dozens or hundreds of other projects that other artists-programmers have developed from my studio’s code. Infecting future projects is our new strategy for preservation. To our knowledge this will be the first time that a comprehensive art show will be made available with an open source code.

Version 0.9.1

PS. The cover image is “33 Questions per Minute” a piece from 2000 which ran on Windows 98 and was programmed in Delphi. In 2006 MoMA’s acquired the work and used my source code to port it to C++ and run it on Linux, thus proving that stockpiling old PCs was not necessary to assure conservation. That was some next level shit right there and a big relief for all. I have only now found this new initiative from the Museum and I shall look at it closely http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2015/05/13/open-sourcing-momas-digital-vault/

PS2. I want to acknowledge the talks I have had with numerous friends and colleagues, most notably my studio assistants and the great Kim Brickley whose interviews helped me put some order to it all; but also Steven Sacks, Patricia Ortiz Monasterio, Zimoun, Daniel Canogar, Pip Laurenson, Glenn Wharton, Christiane Paul, Ben Fino-Radin, Kate Lewis, Sarah Cook, Beryl Graham, Matthew Biederman, Kathleen Forde, Rudolf Frieling, Barbara J. London, Pablo Helguera, Colin Griffiths, Alain Depocas, Jean Gagnon, Abigail Susik, Steve Dietz, Erkki Huhtamo, and other artists, collectors, historians, curators and conservators who like talking about this kind of thing.

*Rafael Lozano-Hemmer was born in Mexico City in 1967. In 1989 he received a B.Sc. in Physical Chemistry from Concordia University in Montréal, Canada.

Electronic artist, develops interactive installations that are at the intersection of architecture and performance art. His main interest is in creating platforms for public participation, by perverting technologies such as robotics, computerized surveillance or telematic networks. Inspired by phantasmagoria, carnival and animatronics, his light and shadow works are "antimonuments for alien agency".

sourced at www.github.com

2020 Art Market Predictions by Jason Bailey | Artnome January 27th, 2020

Osinachi - Elephant in the Room, 2019

We are in the middle of a generational culture war, and the entire art market is about to be turned upside down by an emerging class of collectors looking to reshape the art world in their own image.

As we enter a new decade, my 2020 art market predictions will make the case that the art market will be unrecognizable ten years from now (in 2030). I build this case on three core beliefs that I will outline and argue in this article:

• Artist popularity is more important in driving the price of artworks than any qualities intrinsic to the art

• Millennials/Gen-Zers are culturally antithetical to Boomers

• Boomer wealth will change hands over the next two decades and Millenials/Gen-Zers will use it to invest in diversity in the arts

I've spent the last three months researching the literature on price prediction and valuation for the art market for an article I submitted to an academic journal. I won't re-write that article here, but I will share that I came away believing we are about to see a massive shift in which artists are propped up by the art market.  Here's why:

Art Prices are Largely a Popularity Contest

In 2004, Domenico De Sole, former CEO of Gucci and current chairman of Sotheby's, paid $8.3M to the Knoedler & Co. gallery for a painting thought to be by Mark Rothko. The work was one of many painted by art forger Pei-Shen Qian and sold through the gallery to unsuspecting collectors. De Sole sued the Knoedler gallery in 2016 for $25M in damages. When asked if the knowledge that the painting was no longer by Mark Rothko changed its value, De Sole exclaimed, "I think so!" adding, "It's worthless."Nothing physically changed about the painting — it had the same appearance and the same craftsmanship and quality. Yet it went from being worth millions of dollars to worthless when discovered to be by Pei-Shen Qian instead of Mark Rothko. This extreme devaluation of works discovered to be forgeries happens all the time. Why? Because the popularity of an artist is more important than any qualities having to do with the artwork itself in establishing its price. Mark Rothko is more popular than Pei-Shen Qian, so his work is more expensive.We’d like to think an artist’s popularity and success is tied to their talent and skill. History shows that gender, skin color, and according to one recent study, where you were born and the level of access you have to a handful of prestigious institutions, are the most important factors in developing a successful career as an artist. Talent-wise, you might be the next Mark Rothko, but if you are not popular with the right group of people, you might as well be Pei-Shen Qian.  This dependency on artist popularity means art prices are especially vulnerable to changes in values from one generation to the next. Millennials and Gen-Zers value systems are measurably at odds with Boomers and we should anticipate unprecedented market upheaval in the coming decades.

Millenials/Gen-Zers are Culturally Antithetical to Boomers

If 7-Up is the Uncola, it might be helpful to think of Millenials/Gen-Zers as the "Unboomer." They broadly define themselves in opposition to the ideals of the Boomer generation. They've even popularized the catch phrase "OK Boomer" to efficiently dismiss a generation whose values they see as closed-minded and incompatible with their own. Likewise, Boomers frequently refer to Millennials/Gen-Zers as the "Snowflake Generation" for believing that they are each unique and special, seeking too much attention, and being over-emotional and sensitive. 

How big is the gap in values between generations, and where do they differ? Polls show children and grandchildren of Boomers are far more tolerant on critical issues like diversity and gender norms. They are also much more concerned about the climate crisis.

• 62% of Gen-Zers/Millennials believe increasing diversity is good for society vs. 48% (less than half) of Boomers

• 68% of Millennials prefer movies and TV shows with diverse casts vs. 32% of Boomers

• 70% of Millennials support gay and lesbian marriage vs. 39% of Boomers

• 56% of Millennials see a link between human activity and climate change vs. 45% of Boomers

How do these polls play out in real-life decision making? No generation is monolithic, but you can tell a lot about a group's values by who they elect as their leader and which artists benefit most from their patronage.

In 2016, more than half of the Boomers who voted in the United States voted for Donald Trump as their president. Trump's best-known mantras are "your fired" and "build a wall." Both are messages of exclusivity and subjugation designed to bully and humiliate those in less powerful positions. Trump's persona is a caricature of the 1980s playboy built on public displays of extravagance and wealth. His attitudes towards women inspired the largest single-day protest march in US history just one day after his inauguration. Trump's administration has not been friendly to LGBTQ rights. And finally, Trump is anti-science and does not agree with experts about climate change, calling it a Chinese hoax.

Obviously, Trump embodies some firmly held Boomer ideas about leadership, or else the majority of them wouldn't have elected him as their president. But is Trump an anomaly or a true reflection of Boomer values? Let's follow the money and look at which artists most benefited from Boomer patronage to see if there's a trend.

Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst have generally ranked near the top of the list for being the wealthiest living artists over the last several decades. Like Trump, both are white, male, and rich. They both made hundreds of millions of dollars by outsourcing the art-making process to craftspeople and then laid off most of those people in many cases with little cause or notice. Like Trump, both have built their personas around conspicuous consumption and ostentation.

Hirst, who has said money is important as love and death, is known for creating a diamond-encrusted skull that fetched $100M in a private sale in 2007. Koons’ stainless steel sculpture of a cheap inflatable rabbit sold for $91M last year, setting a new auction record for a living artist.  

As with Trump, Koons and Hirst have mastered the art of using shock tactics to keep their names in the press and to stay visible and relevant. Koons by hiring adult film star Ilona Staller to have sex with him for a pornography shoot and then selling photo-realistic paintings and tacky sculptures of the sex acts as his art.

Hirst kept his name in the news by killing animals, cutting them in half, and floating them in large tanks of formaldehyde. In 2017, Artnet estimated nearly a million (913,450) animals had given their lives for Hirst's art.

In the notoriously illiquid art market, it often takes a generation before an artwork is resold. Will Millenials and Gen-Zers who grew up in the #metoo movement and losing sleep over climate change be interested in the artists that were propped up by Boomer wealth?

Millennials/Gen-Zers Will Shape the Art Market in Their Own Image

Data from the Pew Research Center

In the next 25 years an estimated forty-five million US households will pass down an unprecedented $68 trillion to their children and grandchildren, according to a report from Cerulli Associates.

With this wealth transfer will come a new generation of freshly minted collectors eager to build an art market in their image. As the most diverse generation in the history of the United States, we should anticipate a greater variety in the gender and race of the artists who will benefit at the highest levels from their patronage. We should also expect that this younger generation of collectors will be much more concerned about climate change and ecological instability. And lastly, Millenials/Gen-Zers are already far more likely than Boomers to buy online. 93% of high net worth Millennials had purchased art online vs. less than half of high net worth Boomers, according to a 2019 UBS report.

We are already seeing some progress for diversity in the art market. In the last six years, art by women increased in value by 72.9% vs. 8% for art by male artists as tracked by Sotheby's Mei Moses index. But as the stats below indicate, we are nowhere near parity.

• Only 2% of auction sales between 2008 and 2018 were by women

• Just 11% of all work acquired by US museums in the last decade was by women

• Just 14% of museum exhibitions in US featured female artists

The art world's track record for supporting artists of color is equally poor.  Again, the stats show we are nowhere near parity:

• Just 2.3% of all acquisitions by museums were of art by African-American artists from 2008 - 2018

• Only 7.7% of exhibitions at 30 prominent US museums were by African-American artists from 2008 - 2018

• Just 1.2% of art in American museums is by African-Americans

• Just 2.8% of art in American museums is by Latino Artists

Museums are racing to atone for past discretions, and many are literally de-accessioning paintings by well-known white male artists to fund the acquisition of works by women and artists of color. We should expect similar corrections to private collections and in the art market.

Which Artists Will Benefit Most From a Generation Eager to Highlight Diversity?

Jean Michel Basquiat - Untitled, 1982

The $63.7B-a-year art market is notoriously top heavy, with just 1% of artists accounting for 64% of sales value. And the vast majority of that 1% have two things in common: They are white and they are male. This should change in the next two decades.

Expect several female artists and artists of color to break into the highest echelon of the market, joining the likes of Van Gogh, Monet, Picasso, Rothko, Warhol, etc. We have already seen Jean Michel Basquiat break through the ceiling with his Untitled, selling for $110M in 2017. I believe artist Alma Woodsey Thomas also has a good shot at breaking into the 1% Club.  

Alma Thomas at the opening for her show at the Whitney

Thomas is an incredibly strong painter. Find a museum showing her work and see for yourself how her paintings hold up against all the other ab-ex and color-field titans of the 20th century. From a talent perspective, Thomas is clearly one of the most important colorists of all time, but we know talent is only part of the story — and not even the largest part.

Alma Thomas, A Fantastic Sunset, 1970

Since we know the price of art often has more to do with popularity of the artist than the quality of the artwork, it is essential to look at Thomas' bona fides, which are nothing short of remarkable — especially given the all of the discrimination she faced.

• First African- American women to graduate with an art degree

• Earned a Master of Arts degree from Columbia University in 1934

• First African- American woman to receive a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum (1974)

• Resounding reviews in The New York Times in an era of prejudice and bias

• Selected by the Obamas for display in the dining room of the White House

Alma Thomas’ Ressurection hanging in the White House dining room.

Thomas' market is already a rocketship. In 2017, a new record was set for her work with the sale of Spring Flowers for $387,500. That record fell again in 2019 when A Fantastic Sunset sold for $2,655,000. The ceiling on her work effectively increased 580% in just two years, and there is still plenty of room to grow. We’ve known that Thomas is among our greatest painters for a very long time. We just needed to wait for a generation excited to embrace and celebrate artists of all colors and genders to come along before we could give her the proper recognition she deserves.

Not all the artists whose success was limited due to discrimination will break into the 1% Club. But we will see the fingerprints of Millennials/Gen-Zers correcting for centuries of bias across all levels, not just the top of the market. For example, important works by Agnes Denes and Vera Molnar, pioneers in environmental art and generative art, respectively, can still be collected for under $10K. I expect the market for both these category-defining artists to heat up quite a bit over the next ten to twenty years.

Denes, who currently has a retrospective at The Shed in NYC, is positioned to break out into the mainstream and establish her legacy as the leading figure in environmental and ecological art.

Denes is best known for her work Wheatfield—A Confrontation, which featured two acres of wheat planted and harvested by the artist on the Battery Park landfill in Manhattan during the Summer of 1982. Denes explains that Wheatfield "referred to mismanagement, waste, world hunger, and ecological concerns. It called attention to our misplaced priorities." Wheatfield, with its dual focus on the environment and economic inequality, fits perfectly into the post-Boomer zeitgeist.

Among Denes’ many significant accomplishments:

• Created the first site-specific performance piece with ecological concerns

• Founding member of A.I.R. Gallery, the first all-female artists’ cooperative gallery in the United States

• Created the first human-made virgin forest in her 1992-1996 reclamation project Tree Mountain, a legally protected site for the next 400 years.

The grand scale and conceptual nature of Denes’ works does make them challenging to collect. However, she also created many “philosophical drawings” and prints, exploring isometric systems and complex map projections. These drawings can be found in the MoMA and other important collections and periodically come up at auction for very reasonable prices.

At the age of 96, Vera Molnar has now created cutting-edge art that explore algorithms with and without computers across eight decades. Molnar helped bridge the gap between computers, which were thought to be cold and antagonistic to human creativity, and traditional artistic practice. She once said that “ultimately the intuition of an artist is the ‘random walk’ of the computer.” Her work paved the way for a generation of influential generative artists and will continue to indefinitely into the future.

Even the art world, slow to embrace women and slower to embrace tech, is finally starting to take notice of Molnar’s work and achievements:

• Art in America featured Molnar in its January, 2020, edition focusing on generative art

• Artnet listed Molnar as one of nine artists who will break out in 2020

• At 96 years old, she is still working and actively exhibiting work around the world

Vera Molnar - (Dés)Ordres, 1974

If I had tens of thousands of dollars to spend on art, all of it would be going to build a collection of important works by Vera Molnar. However, my meager art budget requires that I look for work that costs a few hundred dollars at most, not tens of millions or even tens of thousands. In many ways, I prefer this. I see collecting as an act that can be just as creative as making art or curating an exhibition. If I were spending tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, I’d be thinking in terms of a financial investment instead of just looking for art I truly love by artists I want to support and see succeed.

Osinachi - Can’t Sleep, 2019

Lately I have been buying as much work by artist Prince Jacon Osinachi Igwe as I can get my hands on. For me, Osinachi reflects the best of what the coming generation of artists have to offer.

Osinachi’s work stands out in part because he is self-taught and creates his work using Microsoft Word, a common word processing tool few would ever think to use for making art. His signature use of color and pattern create sophisticated compositions that are dynamic, but flat like a collage, unusual for artists working digitally. His work is bold, distinct, authentic, sincere, and addresses his generation’s desire for equality, diversity, and environmentalism in a way that is direct without being too on the nose.

Osinachi signing a print of Nduka's Wedding Day, 2019

Osinachi is an intellectual. His writing is as thoughtful and candid as his art. His 2015 story A Man and His Breasts is a sensitive portrayal of a boy growing up in Nigeria with gynecomastia. It gets to the same core elements present in his visual art — the pain and suffering all of us feel at times for simply living and being who we are in a world full of rules and systems designed to make us feel shame and fear. Or, as Osinachi describes it, “visible existence as protest.”

Osinachi lives and works in Nigeria, a country which has some of the most brutal anti-LGBTQ laws in the world. By law, members of the LGBTQ community can be whipped or face up to 14 years in jail for showing public affection to same-sex partners. The laws have become so strict that simply being accused of having a “gay” hairstyle or clothing can get you arrested.

Osinachi - Nduka's Wedding Day, 2019

In this environment, Osinachi bravely celebrates people from the LGBTQ community in his work, showing them as everyday people flourishing in their lives. This can be seen in his wonderful work Becoming Sochukwuma, inspired by a 2014 essay I Will Call Him Sochukwuma: Nigeria’s Anti-Gay Problem, written by Chimamanda Adichie in reaction to Nigeria's anti-gay law. It can also be seen in the celebratory Nduka's Wedding Day featuring a male bride on his wedding day holding a bouquet.

Prince Osinachi - Becoming Sochukwuma, 2019

Osinachi’s work covers many other topics challenging stereotypes around single motherhood, highlighting the need for diversity, and protecting the environment. And some of his work is just plain fun.

Osinachi - NWANYỊ AHỤ NA-AKWA AKWA, 2019

In a world where artists resort to making porn or sawing animals in half to get attention, Osinachi is bravely fighting for people to be able to live as they are. It’s a welcome use of art and its potential to positively impact society.

Measurable Predictions for 2030

OK, not going to let myself finish without making some bold and measurable art market predictions for you to hold me accountable for. Based on the extreme shift in values and the ensuing wealth transfer, I predict that by 2030:

• Works by five non-white and or non-male artists will sell for more than $50M each

• Women move from 2% of sales at auction to at least 10%

• Women shift from 11% of all work acquired for permanent collections to at least 25%

• Women will go from being featured in just 14% of exhibitions to 30%

• Acquisitions of art by African-Americans by major US museums will go from 2.3% to 10%

• Art in US museums will go from 2.5% by Latino Artists to 5%

In summary, art’s price is built around popularity. What was popular with the Boomers is mostly unpopular with Millenials and Gen-Zers. Specifically, these younger generations are more interested in diversity, more concerned with climate change, and more comfortable with technology. We should expect that artists propped up by Boomer wealth may have a hard time finding buyers in ten or twenty years — specifically, artists who sexualized or objectified women or treated animals or the environment poorly. By contrast, many talented female artists and artists of color will see their work increase in value -- not because of their gender or skin color, but because they have always been great and only needed a more open-minded generation to be fully recognized for their talents.

Dive in rich, speculative marine biodiversity! NEW WORKS BY SOFIA CRESPO EXCLUSIVELY available AT KATE VASS GALERIE

We’re glad to present new works by our dear artist Sofia Crespo; three works (3) were exclusively made and tokenized on the Ethereum blockchain and uploaded to IPFS for decentralised storage to be sold at Kate Vass Galerie Digital!

More information about the series you can find below, however we are very excited that Sofia has chosen KVG Digital and placed trust in us to tokenise her artworks and support the sales through our online store. We need more female artists in this world and we are happy to support this initiative! Enjoy the beautiful works!

About the work and the process:

“Every image is a magnitude of pixels, each a single square of colour, that form a recognizable whole: the image. If we examine them closely they degrade, lose coherence and quality. Using the photomosaic as a revitalised tool, the aim is to explore another way of thinking about the close (re)examination of the image: namely that each pixel can contain coherent, recognizable content when inspected closely: a vessel within a vessel. Simultaneously the photomosaic has the honest quality of abstracting the crisp original from which it is generated, it becomes clearly potent with detail despite its stylization. Coupled with the potentially infinite variation of the generative, a richness emerges.

The containing vessels use a convolutional neural network to create images of rich, speculative marine biodiversity. These are then populated, per pixel, with new vessels: these are the output of a GAN trained on undersea life (with a hint of terrestrial botany). These outputs contain within them a rich essence of the aquatic in potentially infinite variety, leading to a diverse, flourishing meditation upon underwater life.” Sofia Crespo

Sofia Crespo

Bitcoin turns 11!

On 3rd January 2009 the first Bitcoin block was mined by its creator Satoshi Nakamoto.

Through Block #0, Bitcoin - A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System - was born!

In this so-called Genesis Block, Satoshi Nakamoto even embedded the text “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks” as a clear comment referring to the instability of the financial sector.

We are lucky enough to have this amazing unique work from the series “Blockchain Aesthetics” by artist Rob Myers which renders the First Halvening!

Rob Myers
First Halvening (Bitcoin Block Header, 8 Bit Palette, Squares), 2018
Signed in pencil on front
Unique Giclee Print
101 x 101 cm

The work is available on our website HERE

"Inspire. Disrupt. Create. Evolve. Together." 2nd Disruption Disciples event #Zurich, 26th NOV 2019

"Inspire. Disrupt. Create. Evolve. Together."

ART MARKET DISRUPTION, PRESENTATION BY KATE VASS GALERIE AT DISRUPTION DISCIPLES ZURICH 26TH NOV 2019

Happy to speak about "Art Market Disruption" at the 2nd Disruption Disciples #zurich chapter event among 3 other amazing women, who will share what they are passionate about:#Finance, #Privacy and #Work. The event will take place at #Ginetta on 26th November at 18.00 where managing director Ilona Baier will kick-off and set the stage for another unforgettable #DisruptionDisciples event in 2019 for our community and welcoming the following Superwomen on stage: 1) The push model of finance and the attention economy (Efi Pylarinou , Global #FinTech Influencer) 2) Art Market Disruption (Kate Vasilieva, Founder Kate Vass Galerie) #arttech 3) Tightrope walk between privacy and social media (Nora Rümbeli, Head of Data Protection at a bank) 4) From surviving to thriving: How STEM mentoring can change your life (JANET T. PHAN, Founder of Thriving Elements). The presentations will be followed by a networking apéro to enjoy the evening and talk about the keynote topics as well as #innovation,#AI, #blockchain,#RegTech, #FinTech and much more. Register for the event here: https://willcome.to/disruptiondisciples

The event is free and everyone is welcome!

VIII St. Petersburg International Cultural Forum 14-16 November 2019

There are just a few days remaining until the start of the VIII St. Petersburg International Cultural Forum.The Forum has been deservedly recognized as a global cultural event that attracts thousands of experts in the sphere of culture all across the world every year: stars of theatre, opera and ballet, renowned directors and musicians, public figures, government officials and business people, members of the academe. Forum Organizers: The Government of the Russian Federation, the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and the Government of Saint Petersburg.

The Forum is developing in three dimensions at the same time. A large-scale business programme will be of interest to specialists in different areas of culture. The Festival Program includes multiple cultural events for city residents and guests of Saint Petersburg. The Business Venue creates conditions for projects implementation and signing of agreements in the field of culture.

This Year program is impressive and I am glad to speak on behalf of Art & Tech Association Switzerland, bringing Kate Vass Galerie as a business case on new ways of collecting at the panel moderated by Ksenia Podoynitsyna (Founder of InArt) “ NEW APPROACH AND TOOLS FOR COLLECTING CONTEMPORARY ART “.

Check out more about forum here: https://culturalforum.ru

#collectart #collecting #artnews #contemporaryart #artandtechassociation

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