How a crisis propelled the art world into a new virtual reality
The Frieze New York team had been plotting a virtual version of the fair before the Covid-19 outbreak, a first for Frieze, and that has been smartly retooled. ‘It was meant to be a nice addition to the physical fair,’ says Loring Randolph, director of Frieze New York, ‘an opportunity for galleries to show off special projects or just pieces they couldn’t physically show. But as soon as it became clear we would have to cancel the physical Frieze New York we just changed the whole structure and how you would look at the galleries. And it was really led by the galleries.’ What was planned as side-show is now the main, indeed only, event. ‘We have essentially recreated all of the regular programming,’ Randolph says.
But now you can easily look for works that are less than $10,000, do a search and see everything available from every gallery that’s participating in the fair. And actually, I get kind of addicted to looking at it because there is just more market transparency. We made sure that the price field shows up in the thumbnail images.’
‘Beside Itself’, which includes virtual versions of works by Bradford, McCarthy, Louise Bourgeois, Jenny Holzer, Lorna Simpson and more, launched last week. Wirth says the gallery’s new VR platform pulls together technologies usually used in architecture, construction and video-game design, building up VR imagery on a pixel-by-pixel basis. ‘We aren’t re-inventing the wheel,’ says Wirth, ‘but we have taken three technologies to build a new wheel.’
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