Contemporary art fairs have turned up in seemingly every major metropolis across the developed world in recent years, so it was perhaps an inevitability that someone would attempt to expand the model to the Internet. Now, with the Jan 22 launch of the VIP Art Fair at 8am North American EST, that inevitability will become a reality.
VIP, which stands for “Viewing in Private,” will unfold on a custom-designed online platform that hosts “booths” for 138 participating galleries as well as additional collaborating institutions, and includes embedded instant messaging and other SNS functions. Not only pioneering new territory for the art market, the fair, which continues through Jan 30, is also an experiment in how to create an event online, and will serve as a high-stakes barometer of changing attitudes toward Internet-based activities.
While many real-world attempts to cash in on the 21st-century’s booming contemporary art market have failed to gain traction, VIP is at least pushing off from the solid footing of a high-profile pedigree, with co-founders Jim and Jane Cohan of New York’s James Cohan Gallery attracting an impressive roster of international peers.
During an exclusive preview of the fair site, Jane Cohan told ART iT that the genesis of the fair came from an “a-ha” moment. “We had this frustration that there was no one place you could go online if you were looking for the world’s leading galleries,” she said. “And we also wanted to improve how people look at art online – starting with the way galleries present art on their individual websites, we felt there simply wasn’t enough information for connecting collectors with specific pieces of art.”
“The art fair model is perfect for achieving those goals because we are not creating an e-commerce site, there’s no ‘buy now’ button, and that’s the same as any art fair.”
In order to realize that vision, the Cohans teamed up with Internet entrepreneurs Jonas and Alessandra Almgren to produce a site that simulates the physicality and spontaneous interactions of visiting an exhibition while adding the convenience of the Internet. Participating galleries have paid between USD 5,000 and 20,000 for booths ranging in volume from eight to 20 works, which are displayed in scale to each other as images arranged along a virtual “wall.” Additionally, galleries can exhibit supplemental material such as alternate views of the works on display, artist biographic information and videos of interviews or exhibition tours.
Access to the fair is free after the completion of a simple registration. Visitors enter each booth through “maps” that reflect the typical architecture of fairs such as Art Basel or Frieze, or through indexes that are sortable by gallery name, gallery location, fair section, artist name and price range among other categories. Once inside a booth, visitors can then scroll through each image. A “Show Scale” function allows works to be viewed in relation to human scale, represented by a silhouetted figure that appears before each image, while clicking on an image enables zooming in for greater detail. Visitors are also able to create their own tours of the fair that they can share with friends or, in the case of advisors and curators, their clients or acquisition committees.
Those who pay for VIP passes – USD 100 during the first two days of the fair’s run, USD 20 thereafter – are also privy to the price range information of each work and the ability to conduct live chats with gallery staff. Replicating the exclusive services of real-world interactions, dealers also can create “private rooms” for individual collectors with selections of work images not featured in the booth.
The organizers have also recreated the customary off-site excursions that accompany art fairs, in the form of video visits to private collections in Japan, China and the US, and video studio visits with 18 international artists, perks available to VIP pass-holders with access to the VIP lounge.
The immediate advantage of the online format is that, without the need for shipping or art handling, galleries can display works that would ordinarily involve vast expense were they to be shown at a physical fair, such as the room-filling Roxy Paine installation of twisting, biomorphic metal beams, Distillation (2010), on view in the James Cohan booth. The question is whether collectors will consider spending large sums for works they have not seen in person, no matter how sophisticated the simulation technology may be.
That hasn’t stopped galleries from presenting blue chip material. Notably, New York’s Washburn Gallery is featuring a solo show of small drawings by Jackson Pollock starting in the USD 100,000-250,000 range, while James Cohan’s Roxy Paine piece is valued at over USD 1 million. The multinational Galleria Continua is featuring a warehouse-sized installation by Anish Kapoor commissioned for its Beijing branch in 2007, Ascension, while New York’s Gavin Brown’s Enterprise has made room for small scale pieces by painter Elizabeth Peyton.
Many booths seem to be mixed-bag presentations of gallery artists, although others reflect concerted attempts at curatorial strategy, displaying works of similar scale to achieve a uniform visual impact, or purposefully alternating the flow of work scales and artistic styles. The multinational Gagosian Gallery, for example, has inserted at various points along its line-up of works by Robert Rauschenberg, Damien Hirst, Richard Prince and Andy Warhol images of chairs designed by Jean Prouvé, adding a sense of rhythm to the visual progression.
Visiting Japan for the opening of a solo exhibition by Simon Starling at the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Toby Webster of the Glasgow gallery The Modern Institute told ART iT that in organizing his booth, he conscientiously included lesser-known artists, with the idea that art on the Internet should be about new discoveries rather than known properties.
Traveling in Europe, Atsuko Koyanagi of Tokyo’s Gallery Koyanagi told ART iT via email that she saw the fair as a potential means to develop new clients. Koyanagi is known in Japan for avoiding international art fairs that do not meet her standards, regularly participating only in one, Art Basel. Listed among VIP’s founding dealers, she wrote that the annual shipping expenses from Japan to Switzerland are not insignificant, and praised the comprehensiveness of the online system. “With even clients able to access the fair without incurring travel expenses, I expect a strong turnout of collectors,” she wrote.
The day before the fair opening, Masami Shiraishi of Tokyo’s SCAI the Bathhouse was acclimating to the site navigation functions. His staff had prepared the gallery booth with works ranging from paintings by Lee Ufan and Daisuke Ohba to sculptural installations by Anish Kapoor, Mariko Mori and Kohei Nawa. A veteran dealer, Shiraishi was now teaching himself how to use the site’s private room function.
As with many of the VIP participants contacted by ART iT, Shiraishi said that he was attracted by the strength of the fair line-up. However, he also expressed concern about whether the lack of face-to-face interaction would affect his ability to distinguish between serious collectors and art speculators, and acknowledged that in a virtual platform, there was a fine distinction between selling artworks and selling images.
Nevertheless, Shiraishi told ART iT that he feels an online fair is now a necessity, with the volume of sales he conducts over the Internet continuing to increase. “At this point I don’t expect a lot of sales – although of course it would be great if that were to happen,” he said. “What I am really interested in is seeing what kind of contacts the fair will generate.”
As should be expected of the fair organizers, Jim and Jane Cohan have been at the head of the curve in maximizing the potential of their new platform, completing their booth in advance so that other dealers could have a model to follow during “installation,” and filling their booth with supplemental material, including documentation of the proper handling technique for a nine-foot long scroll painting by Yun-Fei Ji. With branches in both New York and Shanghai, the gallery will also be able to provide 24-hour availability to potential collectors in languages including French and Chinese in addition to English.
They have done their best to ensure high quality presentations across the board. “We have a staff here walking participants through the site and telling them what’s possible,” Jane Cohan said. “Some galleries have hired special teams to work on this, others are lagging a bit – I think there will definitely be some peer pressure to make the best booths possible once galleries can check each other out.”
From prices to the possibility of viewing video works online in their entirety, the fair promises a wealth of information not usually posted on gallery websites, available only for a limited time. Responding to the question of whether the fair would create a new standard for how galleries approach business and the utilization of online media, Cohan replied, “I hope so, and I think that is what the traditional fair model has done in the past.
“Gallery booths just seem to get better and better and more and more involved, but it pays off to put together incredible presentations.”