As the art market shows signs of slowing, London is looking to attract a new generation of art buyers while showcasing emerging young artists.
Global art sales fell 4% year-on-year in 2023, according to the Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report 2024falling to $65 billion after two years of growth.
It has led industry professionals, such as Elio D’Anna, co-founder and chief executive of the Home of Nice Artwork (HOFA) gallery in London’s Mayfair district, to shift their focus to younger collectors and artists.
“Five years ago… our target was more buyers aged 35 to forty-five, almost 50/50 men and women. But now we’re seeing more 25- to 35-year-old buyers.[year-old] buyers,” he told CNBC’s “The Artwork of Appreciation.”
This rise in younger collectors comes at a time when artificial intelligence (and how it can be used to create works) remains a hot topic in the art world.
It’s certainly a focus for D’Anna. HOFA represents artist Sougwen Chung, who uses a Chung robotic designed to co-create works. Chung, who uses the pronoun they, calls the machine a drawing operations unit, or DOUG.
“Today I work primarily with efficiency and robotic artifacts, which means translating the digital in terms of data, motion data, spatial data, into really tangible works that can be experienced by an audience,” Chung told CNBC.
Chung, a former MIT Media Lab researcher, said they trained the robot with 20 years of data from their own drawings. “It was really interesting, because we got to see my own stylistic input, my own decision making… transferred and translated into a machine system,” they said.
Artist Sougwen Chung with one of his works of art, created with a robotic they designed known as DOUG.
CNBC
One of Chung’s pieces, “Spectral,” was sold for $35,000 by London auction house Phillips in October as part of a sale called “Spaces“, a collaboration with HOFA.
Phillips has seen a increase in younger collectors buy works by living artists. For Henry Highley, its director of European private sales, “Areas” exemplifies the “fascinating intersection between technology and art.”
“It’s really kind of a recognition by Philips of the importance and significance of AI arts in the… broader art market,” Highley told CNBC. “We really want to be able to have something fresh and new.”
‘Generational change’
At Frieze London, the city’s prestigious art fair that attracts wealthy collectors and celebrities, works by younger artists were displayed on gallery stands near the entrance in a special “Focus” area.
“Sections like the ‘Focus’ sections, which represent younger artists, [are] “I’m thinking a lot about this kind of generational shift and the kind of artists that younger collectors are interested in supporting as well,” Frieze London director Eva Langret told CNBC’s Tania Bryer during the October event.
Finding new buyers is a priority for dealers, according to the Artwork Market 2024 report, with many describing some clients as “aging” or having their collections at capacity.
According to the report, the United States and Europe were described as “fundamentally saturated” and particularly lacking next-generation collectors in some sectors. The United States was the world’s largest art market in 2023, while China overtook the United Kingdom and took second place.
The artist Charlotte Edey with some of the works she presented at the Frieze London art fair.
CNBC
At Frieze, an installation by multidisciplinary artist Charlotte Edey, was shown at the Ginny On Frederick gallery booth as part of “Focus.” His work was made up of a series of drawings and tapestries presented in wooden frames.
Edey described exhibiting at the fair as “a different level of exposure” and told CNBC that his work is based on the “image of [the] The space inside the house, the domestic space and how that can be… used as a vehicle to explore a more emotional or, like, corporal psychological structure.”
The “Focus” section provided a unique opportunity for emerging artists, according to its curator Cedric Fauq. “Focus allows artists to push their own practices, try new things, and expose their experiments to the world,” he told CNBC.
Frieze hopes to attract Gen Z and Millennial shoppers through its Frieze Viewing Room website, according to Langret. “The younger generation is really comfortable purchasing works online and discovering what the fair has to offer online,” he said.
It’s not just art fairs that seek to attract a younger audience. Contemporary art gallery Moco Museum has offices in Amsterdam and Barcelona and opened a branch in London in August. Its co-founder, Kim Logchies-Prins, said young audiences are a focus. “They want to feel welcome and I curate with them in mind,” he said.
“We always have big names on display. So you always see your [Andy] Warhol, here [Jean-Michel] Basquiat, you [Jeff] Koons and then some emerging artists. So I think in one visit you can immerse yourself in the art world,” Logchies-Prins said.
