THE NEW VIRTUAL REALITY – DAVID ZWIRNER 

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In a changing landscape where much of the world has been indefinitely forced into shutdown, prominent art dealer David Zwirner has launched a new online viewing platform enabling both viewing audiences and prospective clients the ability to engage with current exhibitions whilst most of his galleries, aside from Paris and Hong Kong remain closed. 

Opening up an online viewing room to galleries in Brussels and Paris for the fourth edition of its ongoing Platform initiative “The Viewing Room”. The selling opportunity—which allows smaller galleries in Europe to offer select works on Zwirner’s website—will be welcomed by a hard hit art market in Europe, particularly after a shocking report predicted the demise of a third of galleries in France before the lockdown era is through.

Art galleries around the world have been rushing to migrate their operations online ever since they were shuttered, but not every gallery has the budget or the technical infrastructure to support a functional website, let alone the international client base to populate it with sales. This is where mega-gallery David Zwirner, which was among the first wave of galleries to launch an online viewing room back in January 2017, has stepped in to help.

At the beginning of April, Zwirner piloted its Platform initiative to host a dozen New York galleries on its website for a month. (Lower East Side dealer James Fuentes reported that the experiment generated six figures’ worth of sales for his gallery.) Shortly afterwards, Zwirner hosted editions for smaller galleries in London and Los Angeles.  “This current moment continues to be an objectively difficult situation for all of us, but we were lucky to have an online space already built out so we wanted to share it with our colleagues,” Justine Durrett, senior director of David Zwirner’s Paris gallery, tells us. 

Now, the gallery is launching its fourth edition, Platform: Paris/Brussels. The online initiative will run May 22 through June 19, coinciding with the reopening of David Zwirner’s physical gallery space in Paris and Hong Kong this week, with an exhibition of photographs by Philip Lorca-diCorcia.

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For more information go to: www.davidzwirner.com