Johann König on exploring new ways of selling art
Johann König is one of Germany’s most innovative art dealers at the moment. His eponymous gallery has a spin-off called MISA (Messe in St. Agnes), which started as a fair in his gallery bringing the primary and the secondary art market together and has grown into an online platform. In the meantime, MISA is the first art market player presenting paintings, installations, sculptures, and NFTs equally. König also wants to tap into fractional ownership of art works as he thinks this will lower the entry point into the art market for those with little access to this usually closed world. “Our main aim is to open the art market to a wider audience,” he tells Tanya König. MISA artists are put in worldwide and nationwide rankings and the prices for their works are shown in full transparency and compared to prices generated by AI.
“Blue chip art is only accessible to high-net worth individuals, and I think that’s wrong.”
“Art is proven by history to be a very good storage of equity,” he says, and with higher inflation in sight, König wants to offer a way for a new audience to invest in art. “I think there’s nothing more beautiful to being emotionally and financially invested in art,” he says. He argues that if younger generations not only have a stakes in crypto, real estate or stocks, but in art as well, they will also engage with the art world. Through fractional ownership, a buyer can purchase a stake in art with a smaller budget. This is possible through blockchain technology.
“This will be the future of art fairs: less selling points.”
Johann König also tells Swizz Art Biz how he experienced the last edition of Art Basel in September 2021, the first physical fair after the pandemic. He thinks that fairs should evolve in the direction of festivals, where the work is being put into context instead of only being about selling since art can be sold throughout the year anyway. Art Basel 2021 was, however, a big success for König Galerie. Besides having a booth, König worked with Swiss artist Claudia Comte for Art Basel Parcours.