a wedding made in Miami

[ad_1]

For decades, tech investors have been the elusive unicorns the art market has been chasing. Now, thanks to NFTs, the Trojans of cryptography, the worlds of art and technology are starting to merge. And with fintech companies flocking to sunny, low-tax South Florida, Miami is fast becoming an NFT’s collection hotspot.

Much of this is due to Miami Evangelical Mayor Francis Suarez, who over the past year has vehemently courted tech workers and investors in the Bay Area and East Coast. The viral moment came last December when venture capitalist Delian Asparouhov tweeted: ok guys, listen to me, what if we move Silicon Valley to Miami? How can I help ? Suarez fired back. This week, the mayor is doing his part to build bridges with the art world by attending a symposium yesterday, NFT BZL, which examined the convergence of culture with blockchain.

Several years ago, it was rumored that Art Basel envisioned San Francisco as a possible location for a rumor fair that the Swiss firm denied. Its global director Marc Spiegler notes that Silicon Valley’s tech elite have generally not been engaged enough in the art world to get on a plane and come to Miami Beach. But now a new pool of tech entrepreneurs suddenly lives within a 15 minute drive of the fair and many of them are paying attention to the art market because of NFTs.

Playing for that crowd, Art Basel in Miami Beach (ABMB) has stepped up its NFT offerings. The Tezos blockchain platform is a new sponsor and features an NFT screen just outside the fair, including an interactive element that allows visitors to generate self-portraits using an algorithm designed by the AI ​​artist. Mario Klingemann. SuperRare showcases 20 large-scale augmented reality works in the convention center and several galleries, including Pace and Nagel Draxler, showcase NFTs and blockchain-related artwork on their booths. Meanwhile, galleries across the board are starting to accept crypto for the sale of digital and physical works.

Installation view of Tezos’ NFT exhibition at Art Basel in Miami Beach 2021

Photo credit: Eric Thayer

Marc Billings, tech entrepreneur and founder of Blackdove’s first NFT art gallery in Miami, which opened in June, believes the art world has failed to break into Silicon Valley because he was selling an analog product to a digital audience. He adds: This is the first time that tech natives have felt included in the art scene.

Conversely, with NFT screens becoming more and more sophisticated, traditional collectors are tempted to take the plunge. Blackdove has partnered with electronics company LG to develop a digital canvas with integrated technology that allows clients such as Christies, the Prez Art Museum Miami, and the Cisneros Foundation to display works on chain. The Miami firm is collaborating this week with numerous galleries in several satellite fairs: Saphira & Ventura at SCOPE, Oliver Cole Gallery at Art Miami, Alaina Simone at Untitled and the artist collective PunkMeTender at CONTEXT.

Billings believes this week will be when the crossover takes place. He adds: The concept of NFT has been so popularized, I don’t think it will be a crypto community buy. It will be more of a traditional community purchase.

In order to meet the demands of artists, more and more galleries are collaborating on NFT projects. Some have developed their own platforms. Last month, Pace launched its own bespoke platform, Pace Verso, which sold all five Lucas Samarass NFTs in three hours (priced at $ 10,000 each; prices for the next drop doubled).

The new venture is led by Christiana Ine-Kimba Boyle, Paces’ digital sales manager, who identifies a thriving younger and more diverse NFT collector base in Miami, where the gallery launched its high-tech art space Superblue in may. There are a lot of young people and people of color in Miami, she says. Not all are formally in the technology; some have entered the entertainment or fashion industry. According to Boyle, crypto-financiers are fueling NFT’s sales. They are also very interested in turning to collecting more traditional artwork, she adds.

Boyle doesn’t anticipate Silicon Valley losing its status as America’s tech mecca; Pace is one of a small but dedicated group of galleries in San Francisco (Gagosian opened there in 2016 but closed four years later). Instead, she believes Miami could become the country’s crypto capital. I feel like Miami Art Week will solidify Miami’s status as a hub for the new Web3 world, she says.

At ABMB, Pace presents an NFT from Studio DRIFT and DonDiablo (priced at $ 500,000, with 10% of proceeds going to Justdiggit, a grassroots organization that fights global warming by greening Africa).

While inroads have been made into the mainstream art industry, NFTs still represent a brave new world for many dealers who are used to doing business on gentlemanly agreements. NFT Smart Contacts typically award artists 10% every time a work is sold, while giving them greater control over other aspects of circulation, sales, and display.

Galerie Nagel Draxler, exhibiting at Art Basel in Miami Beach, launches Berlin gallery of blockchain-related art

Photo credit: Eric Thayer

From guardian to facilitator

So will NFTs diminish the role of the gallery? Saskia Draxler, co-founder of Galerie Nagel Draxler, which devoted half of its booth to NFTs at ABMB and is launching a blockchain-related art gallery in Berlin in January, doesn’t think so. She sees her role as a marketer less as a guardian than as a facilitator, saying: We risk a lot of showing new artists. This creates overhead costs, although we accept that there is a culture difference when it comes to DFTs. It might not be the classic way of doing business in galleries, but we are finding ways.

Other modes of commerce are opening up, thanks to the new NFT platforms. Among them is Aorist, an environmentally conscious NFT marketplace that launched yesterday with an exhibition that includes physical installations, immersive augmented reality experiences, and online-only works by artists such as Joanie Lemercier, Refik Anadol and Nancy Baker Cahill. The corresponding NFTs were also released for auction yesterday. Profits go to The ReefLine, a new seven-mile underwater public sculpture park to open off Miami Beachs, which will provide habitat for endangered reef organisms.

Aorist works with artists in much the same way a gallery would, commissioning projects, collaborating with institutions and supporting the creative process, says Miami-based crypto investor and collector PabloRodriguez-Fraile. , who co-founded the platform with artist Andrea Bonaceto. , and the cultural strategist, XimenaCaminos.

Slow learning curve

Creating a bridge between the digital and the physical has been one of the main challenges in mainstreaming NFTs, explains Rodriguez-Fraile, whose own collection includes more than 1,000 NFTs. At the moment, it is very difficult for people who are not technical in blockchain to participate. It can be a slow learning curve and there can be risks with storage, he says. We believe platforms should facilitate this in the same way that Amazon allows you to pay and integrate multiple payment methods. For artists, meanwhile, NFT markets currently offer little marketing, communication, and price sensitivity, none of the things necessary for a professional career with a long-term audience, Rodriguez-Fraile points out.

For others, the volatility of the NFT market has been off-putting; a month after Beeple sold an NFT for a record $ 69.3 million from Christies in March, prices have fallen 70%. Rodriguez-Fraile predicts a decoupling where the majority of NFTs will drop to zero or below, while a select few will become symbols of the movement and continue to grow exponentially in value.

The future of NFTs may be uncertain and the jury is still out on their artistic merit. But their abundance in Miami this week marks a coming of age the art world can no longer ignore.

[ad_2]