FRESCO: New Engagement Model For Art Fairs
Changing the engagement model is key for the future art fairs.
Fair (noun).
A fair is a show at which people who work in a particular industry meet to sell and advertise their products.
“Whether it’s an object you own or one you are inspired to return to in a museum, a work of art you can engage with on a personal level is a life-enhancing treasure.”
— Michael Findlay
Ever since the first global fair, The Great Exhibition of 1851, the model of fair has been the same ever since.
Businesses rent booths, with eye-catching stunts and displays to attract people to stop & look, in hope to seal a deal or two from the bystanders or cultivate a long-term business relationship.
Back in 1851 and even in 1967 when the first art fair Art Cologne happened, the booth and spectator model worked fabulously, because there are no internet & social media back then and fair is the only way for people to gather information about or encounter new businesses, artists or artworks.
Now, with a gallery sending live Instagram story about its shows, and artists talking directly with fans on Twitter & Instagram and sometimes even make artworks based on the fans on social media, we have to question:
Is the current art fair model out-dated?
Can we do something new, to make it more engaging, and to fix the bottleneck growth problem?
Let’s face it, today’s fair and the fairs in history all share the same end goal: drive sales and attract new clientele. However, if you are familiar with the art fair scene, you will know that despite art fairs are opening each month globally, there are essentially no one new at the scene client wise, it’s still the same group of people that’s going to fly from Miami to Switzerland, from Hong Kong to New York.
Just like Pulitzer Winning Art Critic, Jerry Saltz mentioned today:
“As a system, art fairs are like America:
They’re broken and no one knows how to fix them. Like America, they also benefit those at the very top more than anyone else, and this gap is only growing.”
To grow, the art fairs need to attract an entirely new population to participate in the art market, and to do that, we need to have more engaging ways for people to relate with art, not just by taking photos.
And the best way to do so is to allow more people to have the access and know that they can own artworks.
If the art world has been pushing for this change with Prints & Multiples, and mega auction houses even begin to sell price estimate $100–200 artworks, the art fairs need to either adapt, or become obsolete.
The current art fair model is very static and only tend to attract a limited group of visitors from the art world. Furthermore, most of these visitors are going to look around and take photos purely. The gallery staff and artist are occupied with conversation one at a time and tend to intimidate newcomers who do not know which artwork exhibited by the gallery booth is more emphasized or essential.
With FRESCO, we help art fairs creating an engagement model like never before, expand the visitor population to a whole new level.
Many art show booths look like this.
For a visitor with no prior experience with the artist or gallery,
there’s no way of knowing which work is deemed as the best one by the gallery.
FRESCO Art Label
FRESCO Art Label is an artwork label that contains the QR code of that artwork on blockchain, by scanning that QR code, a visitor will be able to see artwork’s provenance, add FRES Trust to this artwork, or get FRES Edition of this artwork if it’s available.
FRESCO Art Label turns art fair experience into a very experiential thing, visitors to an art fair will have a clear vision of the gallery’s best work, and the can actively engage with this artwork and potentially owning FRES Edition of this artwork on blockchain.
FRES Edition is a digital-asset-offering system for the owner of an artwork to issue multiple editions of blockchain certificates. Each FRES Edition holder can gain profits from the appreciation of that edition when the FRES Trust of the original artwork increases.
FRES Edition is the prints & multiples for the digital era. It shatters the limitation of physical location and time with blockchain, just like how Prints & Multiples redefined the definition of artwork.
If an art fair works with its galleries exhibitors to release FRES editions of artworks during the fair, the amount of foot traffic coming to the fair will increase tremendously.
This will be extremely beneficial for large galleries, but more toward mid & small galleries, because with FRES Edition, they can liquidate the blockchain data of their artists’ physical artwork, generating extra revenue from not just fair goers who stumbled upon this artwork’s FRESCO label, but a global population that will see the release of FRES Editions on this particular artwork.
Furthermore, with FRES Edition mid & small galleries are not solely carrying the necessary cost of promoting an artist, rather FRES Edition holders globally can add FRESCO tokens to that corresponding artist’s artwork, in hope to increase their own FRES Edition value but in the process, increased FRES Trust of the artist’s physical artwork.
It’s a win-win situation, galleries now have more patrons globally, and patrons can directly promote the artist they love in hope to increase the attractiveness of their collections, let it be physical artworks or as FRES Editions.
Also think that a kid from middle school can visit the art fair with his classmates and each of them can scan QR codes from the FRESCO art labels at the fair to see which work has FRES Edition available and potentially buying one on FRESCO. By turning a middle school kid into an active artwork holder, we create the best way for art education to happen.
Because people become more engaged if they have a stake in art, if they feel attached to art, rather than just being a spectator of art.
Rather than the existing $63.7 billion art market where less than 10 million people around the world actually own artworks purchased from a gallery, an auction house, or private sales,
think about how big the market will be, if FRES Edition enables tens of millions of people globally being able to own a Picasso FRES Edition at around $100, without limits of location & time, as everything is done on blockchain!
(The price is gradually getting there, as auction houses are selling 500 GBP Picasso lithographs)
Display artwork on blockchain
In the future, art fair will ask galleries to provide FRES ID of each artwork they are planning to exhibit at the fair in a welcome package.
For galleries, uploading an artwork to FRESCO platform is very easy, after the user input all information of this artwork and take 3 HD photos + 1 HD video (>30 seconds), it generates a blockchain ID for this artwork, the sale of the physical artwork will include galleries to the transfer this blockchain ID to the buyer, serving as a provenance on blockchain that is irrevocable, anonymous and globally broadcasted. A gallery that wants to promote its artworks to a global audience will view getting on FRESCO as a necessary step.
Art as we know today has been taken on an ivory-tower approach for centuries, with exclusivity to a small circle of people.
With FRES Trust and FRES Edition, we hope to expand the art population globally to a scale that is suitable for our connected world.
Time to let everyone has the opportunity to own a piece of artwork on blockchain!
Time to let every artist has the promotional channels they deserve to keep pursuing art!
Data Reference:
FRESCO is the world’s first blockchain art asset network.
Through blockchain technology and Elastos platform, FRESCO enables liquidation, promotion, and provenance of artworks at a global scale.
FRESCO has two main components, FRES Trust and FRES Edition.
FRES Trust is a blockchain-based art value measurement system.
FRES Edition is a digital asset offering system for the owner of an artwork to issue multiple editions of artworks on blockchain.
FRESCO is doing the world’s first ICD by distributing 300 million FRESCO tokens to its global community for free.
Through this process, FRESCO will educate 150,000 people globally about art within 1–2 month, even the world’s leading art institutions have never completed this feat.
So far FRESCO has gathered substantial attention & support from the art & blockchain world: renowned artists, collectors along with Director of Bitcoin Foundation & Co-Founder of Ethereum have been openly supporting the tokenization of the art world led by FRESCO.
FRESCO ICD: http://fresco.work/icd
FRESCO Whitepaper: http://fresco.work/whitepaper
FRESCO Twitter: https://twitter.com/fresco_network
FRESCO Telegram Community Talk: https://t.me/fresco_community_talk
FRESCO Telegram Announcement Channel: https://t.me/fresco_network
