Ever wanted to get into art collecting but didn’t know where to start? Wanted to pick up a Warhol for the living room but couldn’t find one in the local gallery? The presently-running VIP Art Fair might be just what you’ve been waiting for. VIP in this case stands for ‘viewing in private’. It’s the first ever exclusively online art fair, featuring ‘booths’ from 139 galleries in 30 countries.
Before you go dismissing it as an attempt by little-known dealers to clean out their storage cupboards, have a look at the participant list. White Cube is selling a Damien Hirst and a Tracey Emin. Farschou gallery from Copenhagen/Beijing has Edvard Munch, Lucian Freud, Picasso, Robert Rauschenberg, Ai Weiwei and that elusive Warhol. i8 from Reykjavik is offering up some Olafur Eliasson installations and prints.
Even if you’re not buying right now, the website is a pleasant distraction. The effect of clicking through the different gallery pages is like a gentrified version of browsing Flickr or your friend’s Facebook albums. There are thousands of images of interesting art to play with until the fair closes on January 30.
If the effect is a little to isolating, you can head along to the ‘Viewing Not In Private’ gathering in Berlin tonight at Babette bar, where folks from kunst-blog.com will ‘guide’ visitors through the art show.
Public Viewing of VIP art fair
Wednesday Jan 26, 8pm
Babette
Karl-Marx-Allee 36
Berlin
