A gallery in Seoul sold a digital painting for $94,000 and I can't make peace with it
I was reading a piece on Artnet about digital art sales in Asia and one number stuck in my head: a single animated loop, 12 seconds long, went for $94,000 at a Seoul gallery show two months ago. I paint in Procreate every night after my kids go to bed, and my best piece has 40 hours in it. 40 hours. Somebody paid more for 12 seconds of looping pixels than most of us will make off our entire portfolios this decade. I'm not saying the piece was bad, I didn't even see it, but it makes me wonder if the market cares about craft at all or just about the name attached to the file. Every showcase thread I scroll through here has people posting work with real skill that nobody will ever pay a dime for. So what's the actual gap here, is it marketing, is it the gallery scene, or do we just need to accept that digital art value has nothing to do with hours spent? I'd honestly love to hear from anyone who has sold a piece over $1,000, how did it actually happen for you?
Sold my first $1k piece through a local group show where the curator actually knew my work, not from posting online. The gallery name and their mailing list did more for that sale than the 30 hours I put into the piece.