The deal was made via Instagram, Signal and Postmates. The name of the buyer remains undisclosed.
Benjamin Katz, Chasing Hearts/Northern Lights, 2018. Source: Āto Gallery/Artnet.com
While the art world tries to keep pace with the times by adopting cryptocurrencies, one gallery is ahead of everyone. Āto Gallery, founded by Carrie Eldridge in 2016, has announced it sold a painting by New York-based multimedia artist Benjamin Katz for 150 bitcoins, or $1.25m. It became the most expensive artwork sold for cryptocurrency.
Eldridge says she did not expect these developments. She uploaded an image of Katz’s work Chasing Hearts/Northern Lights to the gallery’s website and soon got an Instagram message from a potential buyer. The conversation then moved to Signal, an encrypted messenger, where the parties discussed the price. At that time, Eldridge hadn’t set the price, but she knew the painting cost more than the artist’s other works, which range from $5,000 to $100,000. While she was seeking advice from her colleagues about the price, the collector offered to pay 150 bitcoins.
“I had this ethical dilemma!” the gallerist says. “I asked my team of art directors and they said ‘Carrie, the price is the market price, if they offered that, and they feel that they want to pay that’—so we asked ‘are you sure?’ and they said ‘yes, absolutely’.”
The buyer remains unknown even for the gallery. In addition to encrypted messaging, he used Postmates delivery service to pick up his purchase.
Carrie Eldridge. Source: Āto Gallery/Artnet.com
“I couldn’t even tell you who bought it even if we wanted to. That’s something that we want to address because we don’t want there to be a pattern of anonymous buyers of art. Our whole motive to bring transparency to the art market and not to allow people to be shrouded in mystery or to launder money!” the gallerist says. The gallery currently works on launching a buyer verification system similar to Twitter’s blue check.
Eldridge has her own version about why the anonymous buyer got interested in the artwork. The artist’s brother – Jason Scott Katz – moved from the US to Iceland over an investigation into his connection to Wikileaks. He is a co-founder of Iceland’s Pirate Party that advocates for direct democracy and civil rights.
“We can’t say with certainty that is the motivation for the large offer, but we’re speculating that perhaps one his brother’s fans made this purchase as a statement. It’s kind of a crazy story, right?” Artnet.com quotes Eldridge as saying.
The deal broke the previous world’s record for an artwork sold for cryptocurrency set in February 2018, when Kevin Abosch’s Forever Rose was sold for an equivalent of $1m. Unlike Katz’s painting, it is not a physical work, but a digital image sold as a token called ROSE on the Ethereum blockchain. The work was purchased by 10 investment funds, advisory firms and collectors, any of whom can sell their stake. The proceeds will go to charity.
Kevin Abosch, Forever Rose, 2018. Source: Courtesy of the artist/Artnet.com
Apart from selling artworks online and carrying out digital transactions, Eldridge wants to use the gallery to help artists in their professional activity. As every transaction is recorded in a blockchain ledger, it is an ideal way to watch price changes over time, which allows artists to get proceeds from each resale.
“I’ve had artists tell me, ‘I had a piece resold at Julien’s four years after I sold it. It went up 800 percent and I had no idea. I was still selling the screen prints at almost the same price’,” Eldridge says. She hopes cryptocurrencies can help avoid such scenarios.
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