Gagosian’s former digital head is spearheading a ‘safe and welcoming’ NFT marketplace with a focus on generative art

While the fortunes of digital collectibles continue to plummet with every dip and surge of the crypto market, the fine art NFT space, as any Art Block holder will tell you, has held steady in terms of collector interest and appreciation. The proof is not only in global art market shares of NFTs or institutional embrace of the medium, but in the growing number of platforms selling blockchain art.

Tonic is the latest to enter the market, promising “a safe and welcoming space” for crypto-natives and novices alike to discover and collect art NFTs. The gallery launches on 26 January with a kick-off conversation and supported by founding team of the art world’s heavy-hitters.

Susannah Maybank, the former chief digital officer at Gagosian, and Mariam Naficy, the founder of design marketplace Minted, serve as Tonic’s CEO and chairman, respectively. Their founding partners are not limited to designers Yves Behar and Brigette Romanek, architect India Mahdavi and venture capitalist Brit Morin. The head of Pace Verso, Ariel Hudes, has been installed on the board.

Mariam Naficy. Photo: Elisabeth Fall. Courtesy of Tonic.

Such a diverse group, Maybank told Artnet News, is meant to capture a spectrum of perspectives and tastes in Tonic’s direction and curation.

“We have ongoing conversations with people from the traditional art world to people who are very embedded in the Web3 community,” she said. “It is crowdsourced information; we want to make sure that it not only reflects our own aesthetic choices, but that we represent a diversity of voices, and a diversity of artists and aesthetics.”

While the platform is currently focused on generative art, Maybank added, “we’re not militant in that distinction; we’re definitely willing to talk to artists who work in a variety of mediums.”

One click away Chromesthesia: Ascend by Jaime Derringer, pictured in situ. Photo courtesy of Tonic.

On January 31st, Tonic will drop its genesis collection, a generative art series titled “Chromesthesia: Ascend” by artist Jaime Derringer (also Tonic’s community leader). To explore the experience of chromeesthesia, where colors are evoked in response to auditory stimuli, Derringer has applied algorithmic disturbances, coded to mimic a MIDI controller, to her original works on paper and digital paintings. The results are pastel abstractions that, although manipulated with artificial intelligence, retain a painterly depth and kinetic.

This handcrafted effect, according to Naficy, is key to Tonic’s wider project to bridge the digital and physical. To that end, each collection includes not only NFTs, but printed editions. “We gravitated towards selecting artists who we thought showed evidence of their hand in their work,” she told Artnet News. “We felt it would be written really well too.”

For Naficy, such hybrid releases can offer an effective on-ramp for more traditional Web2 collectors seeking a “physical” to their digital purchases. And this is where Maybank’s experience in building out Gagosian’s online sales channels comes in handy.

“A very flat image doesn’t always get at the truth and the root of the art,” she said, describing an insight she gained in her previous role. “It’s about getting the artists to tell their stories and getting them on video, but also putting that image in place so that collectors can see it in their home and understand what it might be like to live with it.”

Tonic plans to further facilitate Web3 transactions with credit card payments, a tentative wallet service and a white-gloved gatekeeper to keep newcomers in the room.

One click away Chromesthesia: Ascend by Jaime Derringer, pictured in situ. Photo courtesy of Christiane Lemieux.

In its goal and audience, Tonic joins a host of other NFT platforms, from Pace Verso to Particle, in hopes of onboarding traditional collectors. But Naficy also recognizes the potential to convert NFT buyers into art collectors — the fine art NFT segment, she points out, has grown to $1.3 billion in sales in the first three quarters of 2022.

“I think there’s been a lot of momentum in this sector around new collectors, and just engagement and excitement in this part of the market,” she said.

Community engagement and education, both cornerstones of Tonic’s offerings, will be critical to such an effort, Naficy said — for collectors to not only learn about crypto art and artists, but to get to know other collectors. “It’s meant to be quite a social experience,” she noted.

“The growth of a new generation of art collectors is really important. We see the potential in accelerating the introduction of new people to believe in art and actually collect art,” she added. “So new generations, new collectors.”

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