Kirk LaughlinNEW YORK CITY — Thanks to Collectrium, a new “next-gen” mobile technology that recognizes works of art, Latin American collectors and collectors-to-be will experience art as never before at two upcoming international art fairs: arteaméricas in Miami Beach (Friday, March 25 to Sunday, March 27) and Zona Maco Mexico Arte Contemporaneo in Mexico City (Wednesday, April 6 to Sunday, April 10).
With the Collectrium app, a visitor to either art fair will be able to point her iPhone or iPad at any registered artwork and instantly receive extensive information on the artist and the piece; add the artwork to her “My Collection” favorites; share with friends via Facebook, Twitter, and email; and contact the gallery about the artwork.
Following the debut of its iPhone app at New York’s Armory Week in early March, the Collectrium mobile app has been warmly embraced by gallerists at the two upcoming Latin American fairs, and will now be available in Spanish and English for both iPad and iPhone. With Collectrium, visitors no longer have to make scribbled notes on postcards and flyers; the collector can leave a fair with a browsable list of her favorite artworks, complete with detailed information on each work, artist, and exhibiting gallery. Even if the collector snaps an unidentified artwork, she can easily enter the information and personal notes about the piece. She will have created her own virtual gallery and catalogue. Collectrium also functions as a QR code scanner, so for sculpture, installation, moving image pieces, or any work with a QR code on the label, visitors can use Collectrium to scan the QR code to identify works of art.
“Collectrium is streamlining the fair experience for visitors by offering one central place to browse through the full catalogue of works at the fair, identify, and store favorite works of art, and finally contact a gallerist. And for exhibitors, it makes it really easy to keep track of what they are selling and quickly add works on the spot,” said Zélika García, Director Zona Maco Mexico Arte Contemporaneo.
“This is a social art management system, part of the next generation of tools for appreciating art,“ says Boris Pevzner, the former Silicon Valley entrepreneur who founded Collectrium. “Our app makes the experience of visiting an art fair more interactive for the art lover—enhancing the on-site visit, while also allowing visitors to take the fair home with them.”
“Collectrium makes it possible for visitors to my gallery installation here at MACO in Mexico City to share works of art with friends around the world–in an instant. This app is making it so much easier for collectors and gallerists to connect with each other, and that’s exactly the kind of technology we need at an art fair. It’s really useful!” Pamela Echeverría, Director of LABOR in Mexico City.
Pevzner concludes: “We’ve created a bridge between the physical and virtual art worlds by bringing the power of online technology to that live moment of discovery.”
In addition to using the Collectrium app to automatically identify artworks, visitors to the participating fairs will browse the entire art show catalogue on their mobile device; enter images, details and personal notes about works of art not already registered in the system; and view all the programming and scheduling information about the fairs.
Furthermore, the visitors who store their own private collections on the web using Collectrium will have easy access to their artworks through the same mobile app, alongside the artworks exhibited at the art fairs.
“The Collectrium app eliminates a lot of the guesswork and confusion from the fair experience and that is invaluable for collectors looking to document their favorite works of art and connect with gallerists. It’s also a great way to help people make a purchasing decision when they can access and take the gallery and art piece information with them,” says Giselle Delgado (Gigi), Creative Director of arteaméricas.
About Collectrium
Founded by Boris Pevzner in 2009, Collectrium is a New York-based company providing innovative technology for discovering and displaying art on the web and mobile devices, including the revolutionary art identification and art similarity tools. Over time, the Collectrium team—which has extensive expertise in the fields of in technology, finance, and the contemporary arts—will offer collectors and galleries integrated services for art storage, appraisals, financing and other needs.
Pevzner’s business ventures are built around a deep understanding of how different kinds of communities can be enhanced and transformed through innovative technology solutions. In 2003 he helped to conceive and develop xfire, a revolutionary social networking online service ($102M exit via a sale to Viacom). He has also co-founded Centrata, a pioneer in cloud computing for enterprise-class datacenters, and conceived and developed Lontra, a leader in service management of Information Technology.
Pevzner is a frequent speaker at IT industry conferences, and he often serves as an advisor to senior technology executives of Fortune 500 companies on issues of IT management and security. Pevzner holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He was born in St. Petersburg, only a stone’s throw away from The Hermitage.
The Fairs
arteaméricas and Zona Maco are the preeminent art fairs for the Latin American community. This year arteaméricas presents close to 50 galleries in more than 80 spaces and showcasing more than 300 artists, from every country in the Americas and Spain, in the Miami Beach Convention Center. In celebration of arteaméricas’ ninth consecutive year, this year fair organizers are mounting a special tribute to Mexico.
This April, Zona Maco assembles 90 galleries from around the word in order to display the work of more than 900 aritsts in the vast Centro Banamex exposition hall in Mexico City.
Zona Maco and arteaméricas iPhone apps, powered by Collectrium, will be available from the Apple App Store one week before the fairs start.
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