New Art Initiative OxCollection Is On a Mission to Institutionalize Digital Art

With Christie’s Art + Tech Summit kicking off Wednesday, a who’s who of top figures in digital art, crypto, blockchain, and AI have made the trek to the auction house’s Rockefeller Center headquarters.

Among those flying in from afar is Elle Anastasiou, a new media art expert and the OxCollection (pronounced “Hex”). Backed by Czech entrepreneur Karel Kamárek, the OxCollection is a Basel-based digital, new media, and time-based art collection that launched last year with the goal of developing, preserving, and exhibiting contemporary digital art. Its first public exhibition was held in Prague last August, “Dvořák Dreams,” a large-scale data painting commission by Turkish-American digital artist Refik Anadol. That work is set to head to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. in September.

ARTnews caught up with Anastasiou ahead of the start to the summit to discuss OxCollection, the future of digital art, and the health of the contemporary art market. As Anastasiou said, she is on a mission to institutionalize digital art.

“OxCollection’s catchphrase, if you like, is ‘digital art from the present, for the future,’” she said. “I believe the work in our collection encapsulates this concept.”

The interview has been edited lightly for concision and clarity.

ARTnews: How was the idea for OxCollection born?

Elle Anastasiou: New media art, technological art, and digital art are all so undefined in their scope. They can include anything from long narrative film through to photography. There are significant barriers preventing collectors from focusing on new media art because of insurance, storage, display ability, lack of communication regarding the format, conservation issues, and so on. There are so many different parameters that function as limitations on why digital art is not focal to a lot of collections, in addition to the fact that, of course, it’s newer and the culture of collecting around it hasn’t really developed significantly.

OxCollection was born out of a vision I shared with Karel Kamárek on developing a canonical approach to collecting new media work. New media being artwork which is digital in its production and/or digital in its display. The idea was that we would create a hybridized approach. So rather than taking a universal or a chronological approach, we would define and adopt a different curatorial theme each year, and we would find masterworks through the artistic canon, both from established artists and from newer, emerging artists who could elaborate on that theme. Whether it’s “Synesthetic Immersion,” which was last year’s theme, or this year’s – called “Deus Ex Machina” – which is investigating the relationship between the human, the body, and the machine and the different hierarchical approaches which people have taken to art since the ‘60s.

The narrative in the digital art world seems to be moving away from NFTs. Is OxCollection also distancing itself from the subject?

I get very frustrated by this question. I mean, it’s a good one. I think the simplest answer is that OxCollection appreciates NFTs as a cultural moment. However, as a product of our mission to put together a legacy collection of digital media, we’re looking far beyond NFTs, both in terms of chronology and relevance. NFTs, particularly during the boom of 2020, invited a significant number of people to both appreciate and create artwork which was displayed and transacted digitally. And while I think that there was a net positive impact of that invitation, a lot of that artwork was not destined to be fine art. It was not designed to be considered as fine art. And the true relevance of NFTs, in my opinion, was more in their development of a community aspect and social functionality. This is interesting in itself, but not necessarily inherent to the decades of digital art which came before it, at least not in the same manifestation.

In terms of steerage, I would say NFTs are such a small subset of a larger group of work, which is both within the collection and within the scope of digital art, that they’re not something which need to figure into every conversation regarding this medium.

What are the challenges of bringing together a traditional art audience and a digital art audience as you strive to institutionalize digital art?

I think the hybrid mechanism of having two different crowds often comes with two different political stances, two different perspectives, two different forms of radicality or lack thereof. I think the hybridity of a traditional art collection approach to collecting such a hyper contemporary field, which is currently under significant scrutiny, is really what makes OxCollection such an interesting project from an institutional standpoint. We are on the road to institutionalizing digital art and we are doing this in several ways. For example, at the end of last year, we bought a work by Nam June Paik and also Douglas Gordon’s 24 Hour Psycho, which won him the Turner Prize in 1996. Being able to have such significant names which are recognizable to the traditional art market allows for a more expansive view of digital art.

If you can grasp these two crowds of people and hybridize them, it’s possible to create something incredibly beautiful. I hope OxCollection will continue to function not only in a traditional institutional format, but also as a touch point for the public and artists and their audiences. We plan to have a physical space of our own in the not-too-distant future where we can encourage discourse, which – at the moment – I feel is greatly needed, not only within the art world but within society at large.

How does OxCollection differ from Ryan Zurrer’s 1OF1 platform, for example? Are you in competition?

I don’t believe that collecting art should be a competition. I’m not someone who likes to criticize other people’s approaches to digital art. 1OF1’s approach is very different to ours. Of course, anyone with a collection – or at least anyone of merit with a collection – obviously desires to make it the best. I would prefer not to speak about 1OF1 because I know them quite well. However, what I can say is that the increased interest from collectors generally, both young and old, informed, uninformed, new collectors or veteran collectors, whether in digital or non-digital spaces, is a really positive sign.

The health of the contemporary art market is being reflected in tepid auction results. How would you describe the state of the digital art market?

I don’t believe the state of the general art market reflects the health of the digital art market, simply because there’s not enough transactions of digital art. They are two completely different beasts. I feel that they’re so radically disassociated. Digital sales are often related to institutional acquisitions, and institutional acquisitions have largely slowed down on a private basis. However, significant digital works are always going to sell.

The people who are radical enough to buy digital art are likely going to continue buying anyway, although I don’t think the digital market is the place to encourage new collectors to start buying challenging works. I do think we’re going to see a shift back to increased conservatism in what’s being displayed by many [digital] galleries.

And finally, what are you most excited for at this year’s Christie’s Art + Tech Summit?

Christie’s has been successful in its efforts to develop a culture around digital art. Thankfully, it’s not just NFTs anymore, and of course, Christie’s has contributed to this. For this summit, the auction house has brought together some phenomenal and leading people from both the visual art world and the technology world. It will be really interesting to learn about the new approaches of auction houses to digital art and digital culture. It’s important to provide a unique space like this for discourse.