David Zwirner launches the online platform Platform

Platform will sell works by emerging artists from other galleries as well and priced between $ 2,500 and $ 50,000

Following the surge in online sales, which according to the latest Art Market Report 2021 have risen to $12.4 billion, renowned blue-chip gallerist David Zwirner has launched “Platform“: an online platform that each month offers a hundred original works from a dozen independent art galleries scattered around the world. Pieces that can be purchased directly on the site, under the click-to-buy model, are priced from a minimum of $2,500 to a maximum of $50,000. 

Zwirner, for each sale made will receive a 20% fee on the sale, further stating that the project is dedicated primarily to young millennial collectors who “don’t necessarily go to galleries or art fairs, but look at art online.” 

According to the gallerist, in fact, these clients, who represent an ever-increasing slice of the market and who discover art and new artists through social networks, had not been adequately satisfied by the art world. 

BEFORE PLATFORM

Already last year the gallery presented a pilot version of the project that was received with success. At that time, galleries such as Bridget Donahue in New York and Night Gallery in Los Angeles took part, while today there are the New York-based Bortolami Gallery, Charles Moffett, and the California-based Jessica Silvermann Gallery and artists such as painter Jane Dickson, photographer and video-artist Jibade-Khalil Hauffman and painter Kenny Rivero. 

Although online platforms dedicated to the sale of art have existed for some time, the entry of such a well-known name in this field is certainly a fact of considerable interest: it is a sign of how the traditional model of the gallery to which we were accustomed until recently is increasingly moving towards greater digitalization. “Platform” reflects the quality standards of the gallery from which it was born, offering visibility to artists and gallery owners who in the confusion of digital communication often struggle to emerge. 

THE POLEMIC OF LARRY GAGOSIAN

But there was no shortage of controversy. Zwirner was in fact accused of having concocted only a clever publicity move: his gallery in fact, through “Platform”, could gather emerging artists from smaller and less powerful galleries, while assimilating information regarding the clientele of those same spaces. Larry Gagosian, another famous blue-chip gallerist, also invited these smaller realities to maintain their own brand and individuality, without running the risk of being absorbed by the market giants. 

For his part, Zwirner says that the inability to go back to the way things were done before Covid-19 came along has uncovered an even bigger art world than we thought existed: “If it proves to be a robust primary market, only the sky can be the limit.”