Centurion Singapore Summer 2021

Art & Design In Focus

Art & Design In Focus “ When you look at the analytics of where everyone’s coming from, it’s really all over the world. That’s the beauty about what we’re creating: I want everyone in the world to be able to access art ” – Oliver Miro high-end VR goggles to simple smartphones. At its most basic level, it allows Miro’s clients to upload an artwork’s JPEG and hang it on the virtual walls of their chosen threedimensional space, for viewers to explore in virtual or augmented reality. Canvas paintings are – for obvious, two-dimensional reasons – relatively simple to insert, while sculptures require more complex 3D scanning. For businesses with larger budgets, his team can map out a virtual version of their actual gallery space, using high-resolution scanning cameras as well as CGI to create a viewing experience that allows collectors to be taken on virtual tours, sometimes by the artists themselves. For early-career artists or smaller galleries with fewer resources, his firm Vortic also offers a free virtual gallery space they can use as a template and ultimately embed on their own websites. “I don’t want anyone to be priced out of using it,” Miro says of the new technology. His original plan to launch the product with works from his mother’s gallery and David Zwirner at last year’s Art Basel Hong Kong were curtailed by Covid-19. But weeks later, as gallerists grew nervous about their cashflow, he offered up his technology via a WhatsApp group to dozens of UK galleries, known as the London Collective. More than 40 of them seized the opportunity to upload their artists’ works as JPEGs, and in a matter of minutes Vortic’s system had rendered those works into existing virtual viewing spaces. “The galleries really enjoyed it,” he recalls, “but I was behind the scenes pulling my hair out because I saw little glitches that were happening, because I was so intent on the quality.” Word got around, and other business contacted him about his fledgling technology. Scaling up during the pandemic was “really, A mock-up of the Vortic Curate App showing a VR representation of Grayson Perry‘s exhibition Super Rich Interior Decoration at Victoria Miro gallery really challenging”, and his team had to make difficult choices about the galleries they took on as partners. Since the launch last May, 150 galleries and 30 museums have used Vortic’s platform, which was “way beyond the expectations that I had – in the first year – of what we would be able to achieve, especially with the pandemic”. Launched with a mobile app, a desktop version introduced this spring has seen visitor traffic spike. One recent collection that proved popular was focused on female artists in Latin America, and it drew huge interest from the continent itself, but also Asia and Australia. “When you look at the analytics of where everyone’s coming from, it’s really all over the world,” Miro says. “That’s the beauty about what we’re creating: I want everyone in the world to be able to access art.” In the months to come, he intends to launch the VR headset app itself, as the corresponding hardware from firms like the Facebook-owned Oculus continues to improve. Which will finally allow him to recreate that experience he had all those years ago of walking through a virtual space – minus the dinosaurs. vorticxr.com UNDER WRAPS L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped, the posthumous work by legendary duo Christo and Jeanne-Claude will be unveiled this autumn in Paris (18 September - 3 October 2021). Almost 60 years in its conception, and a fitting capstone on the couple’s long career of large-scale installations, one of the foremost monuments in Paris will be wrapped with 25,000 square metres of recyclable polypropylene fabric in silver blue and 3,000 metres of red rope, transforming the landmark into one final gift from the captivating artists. christojeanneclaude.net – Hiroko Kamogawa PHOTOS FROM TOP: © GRAYSON PERRY/COURTESY VICTORIA MIRO, IMAGE BY VORTIC; ANDRÉ GROSSMANN, © 2018 ESTATE OF CHRISTO V. JAVACHEFF 56 CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM

WORTH THE WAIT In the wake of pandemic delays, a slew of hotly awaited global museums are finally ready to cut the ribbon on their new spaces. By Brian Noone PHOTOS CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: JOE COSCIA, AURELIEN MOLE, ADRIA GOULA A few brave institutions opened their doors for the first time during 2020, but for the most part, new art museums held back during the height of the pandemic, waiting until this year to welcome visitors. Most notably, François Pinault’s Bourse de Commerce (pinaultcollection.com) in Paris unveiled its first display of the French collector’s astonishingly large assortment of contemporary art in late May, joining his other two spaces in Venice. Another European capital with a long-awaited museum debut is Berlin, where the Humboldt Forum (humboldtforum.org) opened its online galleries in December and is primed to become Germany’s foremost showcase of non-European art, set on the capital’s Museum Island, as soon as regulations allow. In Moscow, architect Renzo Piano spent five years renovating a former power station, and now the 20,000sq m space is also approaching its opening: GES-2 (v-a-c.org) will instantly become Moscow’s most interesting cultural destination, with a gallery, artist studios, 420-seat playhouse and much more, all a stone’s throw from Red Square. The other major new development that has for years been billed as scene-defining is M+ Museum (mplus.org.hk), the museum of visual culture that is the centrepiece “ The Grand Egyptian Museum, in the works for nearly 30 years, will offer an airport-terminal-size home for tens of thousands of antiquities ” Above, from left: Oslo’s new fjord-front Munch Museum; British artist Ryan Gander’s installation, I ... I ... I ..., at Paris’ Bourse de Commerce – featuring a stammering animatronic mouse; top: 19th-century French masterpieces on the fourth floor of NYC’s Frick Madison of Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District, aiming to become Asia’s answer to MoMA, Tate and Centre Pompidou. A pair of global titans have merely shifted quarters, but in so doing completely transformed the experience of the collections. In Manhattan, Frick Madison ( frick.org) is the unlikely coupling of the Frick Collection – one of America’s best, spanning the Renaissance to the 20th century – and the rectilinear Brutalist building at the corner of 75th Street and Madison Avenue, a landmark designed by Marcel Breuer and formerly the location of the Whitney and the Met Breuer. The collection is organised chronologically by region for the first time, and will return to its usual home five blocks away when renovations finish. The treasures of the Grand Egyptian Museum (grandegyptianmuseum.org), in contrast, will never be returning to their central Cairo home. The new space has been in the works for nearly 30 years, and will offer an airport-terminal-size home near the Giza pyramids for tens of thousands of antiquities. › CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM 57