Artistellar is an innovative online gallery platform that bridges the gap between the brick-mortar gallery concept and online art e-commerce. The idea was born when seeing a lack of coherent and engaging online galleries. Artistellar offers a new way of experiencing and collecting art online through curated exhibitions.
How did you come up with the idea for the company?
I was sitting at my desk at Sotheby’s and I was going through the auction calendar for the next season and I noticed a high number of online auctions. The whole company was already in the process of becoming more ‘digitized’ and this was the outcome.
I knew that so many art businesses were being born online but if such a big and traditional business like Sotheby’s is taking the next step then I knew that the answer for me is to start an art tech business one day. We have just celebrated our first birthday!
More from Interviews
- A Chat with Kebbie Sebastian, CEO and Founder of Merge
- Meet Dr Agnès Leroy, GPU Director at Cryptography Tool: Zama
- Meet Roman Eloshvili, Founder of ComplyControl
- Inside Mobile Payments with Bojoko’s Ville Saari
- Meet Steve Haskew, Group Director of Sustainability and Growth At Circular Computing
- A Chat with Hakob Astabatsyan, CEO and Co-Founder of Synthflow AI
- Meet Ernesto Suarez, CEO at Travel Insurance Provider: Gigasure
- Under Pressure and On the Clock: Gurhan Kiziloz’s Nexus International to Hit $1.45B Revenue in 2025
How has the company evolved during the pandemic?
The pandemic has accelerated everything and really was a big impetus in starting the company. People who never viewed or bought art online were left with no other choice but browse online. It really changed the market irrevocably.
Art organisations ramped up their digital development and offering to engage with clients in all sorts of possible ways. And then there is the whole NFT market boom. I think the coming years will only continue and deepen these recent developments and the art market will become even crazier. The tech evolution is inevitable even for one of the most traditional industries like fine arts. In addition, social media is an increasingly invaluable tool for the market.
What can we hope to see from Artiststellar in the future?
The goal is to truly become an expert in scouting high-calibre emerging artists and present their profiles and works in a nomadic way; mostly online but with some occasional offline presence and partnerships. From the customers’ perspective; it is to pave the way for millenials and Gen-Z to buy art and changing the notion that collecting art is elitist.
Our next exhibition is a partnership with art magazine Friends of the Artists and curated by myself. The show presents a selection of 20 international artists from the publication’s latest volume
