#23 Insights: The Digital Art Market's Turnaround and Berlin's Upcoming Exhibitions
#23 Insights: The Digital Art Market's Turnaround and Berlin's Upcoming Exhibitions
👋 Hello, we are Julian and Marcel, and welcome to our weekly edition of The Curious Collector. Each week we humbly curate what’s happening in the digital art realm. ✨
It is a subscriber-only newsletter, delivered every Sunday, highlighting mainly digital and sometimes physical art news.
Welcome to this week's issue, where we explore the Sigg Art Foundation's role in blending digital with traditional art. We're excited about two upcoming IRL exhibitions in Berlin at Office Impart and EXPANDED.ART.
Also, don't miss the captivating highlights from Yoshi Sodeoka, Ralgo, and the intriguing works of artists Kevin Abosch and Linda Dounia. We hope you enjoy these insightful glimpses.
News Digest
Sigg Art Foundation: Based on this week's piece about the Foundation, it's evident that they are instrumental in contributing to the trajectory of digital art.
By blending traditional art forms with digital technologies, it creates a unique platform for artists like Cory Arcangel, who merges digital technology with pop culture; Katja Novitskova, who transforms digital imagery into physical installations; and Pipilotti Rist, known for her immersive multimedia experiences.
Artistic Games: Mitchell F. Chan highlights the artistic value of art games, discussing their ability to reflect and critique real-world phenomena such as platform capitalism and the crisis of agency.
He explains that these games, by offering a limited set of choices leading to predetermined outcomes, mirror the often illusory and constrained nature of real-life choices within larger systems.
This characteristic of digital art games serves as a powerful artistic tool, offering digital artists the opportunity to use their medium not only for aesthetic creation but also as a means for societal commentary.
Upcoming
IRL @ Berlin
Office Impart: “Close Reading” featuring Ana Maria Caballero, Sara Ludy, and Jonas Lund, running from january 25th (opening event 6-9pm) and until february 9th
EXPANDED.ART: Presents “16:9” the first solo exhibition by Danilo Xhema, located at the Showroom on Friedrichstraße 67, running from 16th until 26th january 2024
Digital
“The Flood” by Yoshi Sodeoka, available January 18 on Verse
“Wild Wave Studies” by Ralgo, available January 15 on Verse
Digital Highlight
Ella a talented artist who mainly publishes her work on fxhash has created these 100k particles that repel each other.
We recommend viewing it here in full resolution.
Notable Insight
“Favorable crypto environment will drive capital to digital art. Scarce collections like Fidenza and Squiggles have thin floors and might rally as collectors flock to grails.”
Tim Salikhov (Grail Capital)
Despite a challenging past year, the Ethereum-based digital art market showed a rebound in late 2023, reaching a $5 billion valuation, as reported by Grail Capital. This recovery, marked by significant institutional investment and a shift towards high-quality, culturally significant artworks, indicates a bullish outlook for the digital art ecosystem in 2024.
Additionally, Solana and Bitcoin’s Ordinals have attracted a diverse range of new collectors, further bolstering this view.
Sale Spotlight
Kevin Abosch is an Irish conceptual artist known for exploring identity and value through various mediums, including machine learning and blockchain technology.
His work "Modifying an old machine" is a series of 150 AI-generated artworks, each symbolizing a moment in his life between 1989 and 2000, created using AI models trained on his personal photographic data of various objects, reflecting a dialogue between past and future through five distinct themes.
Artist to Watch
Linda Dounia is an artist and designer who investigates the philosophical implications of technocapitalism and its role in furthering systems of inequity.
She also writes about and curates art exploring these ideas.
Check out her interview
Collectors to Watch
Old but Gold
Tyler Hobbs explains how code becomes art.
Closing Remarks
Thank you for joining us in this edition. As we've seen, despite recent challenges, there's a promising rise in the digital art market, with a resurgence in value and interest. Keep an eye on how this trend shapes the future of art in our upcoming issues.