Less paint, more pixels: The world's biggest art fair thinks digital art has finally arrived

BASEL, June 19 — Art Basel, the world’s biggest art fair, is this year embracing digital art with a new exhibition, betting that the market is set to take off.

Digital art can encompass everything from work on screens and videos to paintings created with computer technology, including from Photoshop, coding and even artificial intelligence.

Dubbed Zero 10, the exhibition across the street from the fair’s paintings and sculptures comes to the home of Art Basel for the first time after it premiered in Miami last December.

Art Basel chief executive Noah Horowitz said the appeal of digital art was a natural bet for the future with a younger generation of people coming of age on screens.

“A lot of what that generation is going to be attracted to collecting and acquiring are going to be objects and things that speak that language,” Horowitz told Reuters.

Sales of digital art made up only 3 per cent of the US$59.6 billion (RM246 billion) worth of global art sales last year, but that was up from just 1 per cent in 2024, according to the Art Basel & UBS Global Art Market Report 2026.

UBS art adviser Eric Landolt said that reflected growing interest not just from millennial and Gen Z buyers, but also from seasoned collectors and institutions.

‘It’s just language’

William Mapan, a French artist who created paintings over two years through meticulous coding, said for the first decade, no one took an interest in his digital art. At Tuesday’s opening, his work sold out in the first hour.

“People usually say painting and coding are completely separate disciplines but it depends on the way you see it. It’s just language - painting is a language, coding is a language, and you can make a third new language in between,” he said.

Still, there are concerns that digital art is exposed to technology that is constantly evolving.

“You might have digital formats that exist now, but how do you ensure they work in future too?” said Landolt.

Alejandro Cartagena, co-founder of Fellowship, a gallery which sold a US$500,000 piece of digital art by john gerrard at Zero 10, said that risk was being factored in.

“Every collector has a breakdown of exactly what it needs to have this run forever,” he said. “We’re very committed to the conservation of the works.” — Reuters