The world’s leading contemporary art fair has taken a futuristic twist this year, offering buyers the chance to see their sculptures on the moon.
Non-fungible tokens or NFTs are all the rage at the Art Basel fair in Switzerland, where the world of digital assets takes off.
Artist Jeff Koons plans to send 125 miniature sculptures to the moon with multi-billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX company.
The sculptures, which will be installed 384,400 kilometers (238,855 miles) from their owners, will be sold as NFTs, which function like title deeds.
The “Moon Phases” statues come with a photo of their lunar position, and buyers can also take home a sculpture with a gemstone marking their alien counterpart’s place on the moon.
“We’re also seeing it for the first time,” said Marc Glimcher, director of Galerie Pace, as he unveiled a moon-shaped statue the size of a beach ball at his stand in Basel.
Elsewhere at Art Basel, Turkish artist Ozgur Kar’s LCD display of a man surrounded by skeletons is being sold by French gallery Edouard Montassut.
The Vive Arts platform, on the other hand, offers an introduction to digital art with the help of virtual reality glasses and presents an avatar by the German artist Albert Oehlen in a 3D universe.
The fair, which runs June 16-19, also features a variety of non-digital works – from an installation by French-Chinese artist Huang Yong Ping depicting a kitchen infested with giant cockroaches to a series of in Wood carved portraits by Franco-Cameroonian artist Barthelemy Toguo.
A spider sculpture by French-American sculptor Louise Bourgeois brought in $40 million.
In addition to sales of yachts, luxury cars, watches and jewellery, the art market has made a strong recovery in 2021 after the shock of the 2020 pandemic.
The stock market rallied strongly last year, filling the coffers of the ultra-rich — and inflation is giving wealthy collectors another reason to pick up a multimillion-dollar painting.
Pace is one of the few major galleries to have ventured into the NFT space. According to Clare McAndrew, author of an art market report for Art Basel, only 6 percent of galleries were selling NFTs in 2021.
Since peaking in August 2021, NFTs have plummeted. According to McAndrews’ records, while arts-related NFT sales rose to $945 million in August, they fell to $366 million in January and then to $101 million in May.
However, those ups and downs don’t worry Gallery Pace’s owner, who believes NFTs represent a “new way of distributing digital art.”
#Moon #sculptures #NFTs #futuristic #Art #Basel #fair
