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For example, Dispatches will lure aficionados and amateurs alike with its series of personal at-home and in-studio videos with artists; the chance to cook recipes submitted by artists, partners, directors, team members and friends; and "Family Saturday at Home", which allows parents and their children to engage and commune via Hauser &Wirth's interactive learning and community experiences.
For Wirth, he thinks of the digital space as a new location for art. He says,"Our new global digital team－drawing upon talent from other fields where digital and virtual reality are very, very advanced－is developing a robust new approach to the web as its own space, as another global 'location' of Hauser& Wirth."
If all the buzz on art's digital platforms sounds familiar, well, that's because we've been here before－in a new world called television. Galleries, conscious of the need to create more noise, are becoming more like TV channels, each competing for our viewing loyalty. One big irony of that approach is that it may not be the art that instils the loyalty, but the quality, variety and energy of the programming. And then the trickiest question: What type of programming gets a gallery over the digital gain line?
As such, galleries find themselves in a situation not unlike luxury brands a decade before them, most of which were late to a robust online presence and the e-feeding table, fearful that too much digital democratization might scare off their core customers. Now, it's the galleries' turn; the greater irony being that fashion's appropriation of art, especially in Asia, had been elevating the status of tiring luxury brands while simultaneously exposing gallery art to younger audiences with robust spending power.
Perhaps surprisingly, much like their luxury brand forebears, the galleries have played it relatively safe. There have, however, been some champagne moments courtesy of auction house Sotheby's; to whit, Korean pop star T. O. P curated a so-called "pop-up" show for the auction house in Hong Kong in 2017 at the behest of super-curator Yuki Terase, and the Supreme digital auction last year at Hong Kong's Hart Hall in the H Queen's building was also instigated by Terase and Sotheby's. In the context of culture and commerce, T. O.P's curated show for Sotheby's Hong Kong was the art world's equivalent of fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld's collaboration with H& M in 2004.
Art galleries, conscious of the awe and intimidation they still invoke, must thus find ways to de-starch their high standing by adapting and adopting soft-power strategies akin to modern luxury and lifestyle brands. Chanel has an obvious advantage in this respect－customers who can't afford the total "Coco/Karl/Virginie" head-to-toe HK$100,000 look can still find entry points to the brand via HK$300 lipstick. But try asking Hauser, Zwirner or Gagosian for HK$300 artworks－they'll smile politely through their HK$300 Chanel lipstick and say,"No thank you."
