Four years after Beeple's Everydays sale for $60.2m ($69.3m with fees) there has been an ebb and flow of commercial and institutional interest in digital and new media art, alongside a significant drop in NFT transactions. Recent launches of two Lower East Side galleries—SuperRare's Offline and Heft Gallery—indicate renewed institutional investment and an effort to bridge Web3 and traditional venues. Offline opened a Bowery space in April, hosting short exhibitions before a July opening and presenting painting, sculpture and animation, many available for cryptocurrency purchase and backed by blockchain. Heft's inaugural show drew both Web3 enthusiasts and traditional collectors.
Both located in the Lower East Side neighbourhood, Offline and Heft Gallery blur the boundaries between Web3 and traditional art venues. The physical space for the NFT giant SuperRare, Offline, quietly launched on the Bowery in April, hosting short exhibitions and programmes before its grand opening in July. While SuperRare had organised pop-up shows in the past, with Offline it saw an opportunity to tap into its platform's wealth of Web3 artists and bring their work into a physical space.
"Digital art takes time and patience for it to mature and grow," Offline's director Mika Bar-On Nesher tells The Art Newspaper. "Part of that growth is experiencing digital art outside of screens." For Offline's inaugural exhibition, Mythologies for a Spiritually Void Time, the guest curators X.S. Hou and Jack Wedge selected artists who take an expansive approach to digital art not just as a discipline, but also as a tool to create physical work.
Collection
[
|
...
]