Conversations | Navigating the NFT Art Market

Thursday, December 2021

Harm van den Dorpel, Artist and Co-Founder, left Gallery, Berlin
Saskia Draxler, Gallerist, Nagel Draxler, Berlin/Cologne
Mark Soares, Chief Marketing Officer and Founder, Blokhaus Inc.
Moderator: Amy Whitaker, Author, Economics of Visual Art and NFT researcher at NYU

Hailed as a shift in the relationship between artists and the traditional gatekeepers of the art market, few events have disrupted the status quo like the astronomical prices reached at auctions for NFTs. Virtually overnight questions arose around the longevity of the NFT market, the art historical importance of NFTs, and what role, if any, galleries should play in the future of the market. How can galleries best help artists in this new terrain? Our panel will explore what NFTs are, how galleries already working with NFT artists plan to work with them, whether all NFT artists need commercial galleries, and how the relationship between galleries and platforms who mint NFTs can be productive.

Harm van den Dorpel is an artist dedicated to discovering emergent aesthetics by composing software and language, borrowing from disparate fields such as genetics and blockchain. Also he co-founded left gallery. Based in Berlin.

Amy Whitaker is a longtime blockchain researcher in the arts and assistant professor at New York University. Her research on fractional equity in art using blockchain received the Edith Penrose Award from the European Academy of Management, and her third book, Economics of Visual Art: Market Practice and Market Resistance, was published by Cambridge University Press this fall.

Saskia Draxler is a gallerist living in Berlin. She has a background in German Literature, Philosophy and Media Science from Frankfurt Main University. Nagel Draxler was founded in Cologne in 1990 and operates in Cologne, Berlin, Munich and Meseberg. An emphasis lies on an established artist generation whose work has been strongly influential for following generations. Our mid-career artists take part in defining the artistic discourses of our times. Finally, with a young generation, we meet the challenges of tomorrow. We see it as a privilege, to be able to give younger artists a context rooted in recent art history.

Mark Soares is Chief Marketing Officer & Founder of Blokhaus Inc, a Marketing & Communications group in the blockchain space tasked with the coordination and execution of global marketing initiatives for the Tezos ecosystem. Prior to founding Blokhaus, Mark was responsible for Marketing & Communications at a consumer electronics company, overseeing branding, product & content marketing, advertising, PR, social media, website, influencer activities and more. After learning about Bitcoin and blockchain in 2015, Mark became actively involved in Tezos, the self-amending blockchain, in 2017 – since then, he has passionately championed blockchain and Tezos as transformative technology that can better connect people and help reimagine how value is exchanged in the new digital economy.