NFT Art Exists Digitally. Collectors Want To Put Them On The Wall

Art collectors and cryptocurrency investors went wild last year buying art that exists only in the digital world. Now, Desiree Casoni, a collector in Key Biscayne, Fla., is trying to figure out how to hang all her new purchases on the wall.

Ms. Casoni owns more than 500 digital artworks with her investor husband, Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile. Bored of swiping through their collection on a cellphone or laptop, the couple initially retooled a few television sets throughout their home, but that meant downloading files onto thumb drives and plugging them in. Ms. Casoni said they next dabbled with digital picture frames designed to run looping slideshows of family photographs, but said some of these models didn’t allow them to resize or crop images.

“I don’t want to look like we live in Best Buy, with chunky black screens all over,” said Ms. Casoni.

The couple even experimented by setting a projector on a plinth in a corner of their living room and pointing it at a blank canvas hanging on a facing wall. When they turn the projector off, digital pieces such as “Elephant Dreams II,” a surrealist pink landscape by Andrés Reisinger and RAC, disappear. When it does, the white canvas alone “looks minimalist,” she said.

Collectors spent $21 billion trading digital art and collectibles last year, up from $67 million in 2020, according to digital-analytics firm DappRadar. Most of these digital artworks were attached to NFTs, or nonfungible tokens, which act as vouchers of authenticity on the blockchain for virtual goods, such as digital art.

As it turns out, those adventurous enough to buy the most cutting-edge digital media still crave some kind of real-world way to show it off at home.

Collectors say they want their physical frames and displays to match the “wow” factor of their digital art. Stephen Zautke, an investor building a house in Puerto Rico, said he plans to blanket a wall in the entry of his new home with a 6-foot-square, micro-LED screen. It is specifically designed to show highly detailed images—in his case, Refik Anadol’s digital 3-D tank of sloshing colors, “Quantum Memories Probability.”

Art adviser Yvonne Force Villareal recently advocated the same wall-size screen idea on her Instagram account, posting a video extolling the vast screen in the studio of her artist husband Leo Villareal, who just released a series of NFTs.

Steven Sacks, who runs New York’s bitforms gallery, said he has been inundated with calls from collectors seeking to frame digital works. Mr. Sacks said he tells them it is possible to get an 8-foot-wide television screen for around $14,000, though custom jobs by digital signage companies can top $150,000. He said he doesn’t recommend converting ordinary TVs that might cost a couple hundred bucks into art displays because it diminishes how the artwork is perceived.

“You shouldn’t want to turn on the football game after you click off your $100,000 artwork,” he said. “That does a disservice to the art.”

So is keeping your NFT collection locked on your cellphone, says Aaron Cunningham, a Berlin-based developer who is selling framed spots within his digital museum, Musee Dezentral, where people can exhibit their digital art. “It’s one thing to look at it on your phone, but great art needs to be elevated beyond the swipe and like,” Mr. Cunningham said.

One startup, Framed, is selling NFTs that mimic ornate picture frames. They are formatted to attach to other digital artworks so that the pair can be posted together. Tokenframe, meanwhile, lets collectors upload their NFTs directly to its physical frames. “At this point, the world is so inundated with NFTs—how can you differentiate yours to signal its worth?” said Sven Palys, Framed’s founder.

Major collectors and artists say the answer, perhaps ironically, is to go for an even more analog look. In another area of Ms. Casoni’s Florida living room sits a blue device by Swedish designer Love Hulten that evokes a vintage arcade game, only the screen shows a video-sound piece called “I Miss You” by the artists Vini Naso and Yambo. The image depicts a floating couple in an embrace, and people can turn the device’s knobs to zoom in or out.

Mr. Hulten and artist Lirona collaborated on “synth#boi,” a limestone piece whose round screen is attached to a synthesizer keyboard. Press the keys, and portions of a cheery robot face illuminate the screen. Mr. Hulten said he designed his display “in symbiosis with her art piece.” The edition of 10 quickly sold out at roughly $65,000 apiece.

Mike Winkelmann, who goes by Beeple, is another artist known for teaming with a partner to build displays for his tokenized art. In the past, he enlisted New York-based Infinite Objects to encase his work permanently within sheets of clear acrylic, objects the company calls video prints. Infinite Objects said it has shipped more than 50,000 units by him and other artists since it launched two years ago.

Recently, when Mr. Winkelmann wanted to go bigger to create his first sculpture, “HUMAN ONE,” the artist used mahogany to build a boxlike structure around a quartet of LG TV screens, which he positioned vertically. The revolving result ended up looking something similar to a phone booth, but with screens projecting a video of a man in a space suit walking in a loop. (Infinite Objects said it recently launched its own line of larger screens.)

Ryan Zurrer, a digital-art collector based in Zug, Switzerland, paid $28.9 million for “HUMAN ONE,” but he hasn’t had it shipped home yet. He already has another 80 NFT artworks but displays only a handful at home. He cites environmental reasons for not running screens all the time.

Mr. Zurrer keeps eight pieces by Mad Dog Jones, Mr. Anadol and Beeple lined up on a shelf behind his desk in his home office. To be able to turn them all on with the flip of a light switch, he had to sync them using a hidden “bucket of wires.”

The rest of his home? It remains NFT-free, he says, “until my wife finds one she likes enough to live with.”

Auto dealers across many parts of the country say electric vehicles are becoming too hard a sell for buyers worried about the range, reliability and price of these models.

When Paul LaRochelle heard Ford Motor was coming out with an electric pickup truck, the dealer was excited about the prospects for his business.

“We thought we could build a million of them and sell them,” said LaRochelle, a vice president at Sheehy Auto Stores, which sells vehicles from a dozen brands in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C.

The reality has been less positive. On Sheehy’s car lots, LaRochelle says there is a six- to 12-month supply of EVs, compared with a month of gasoline-powered vehicles.

With automakers set to release a barrage of new electric models in the coming years, concerns are mounting among auto retailers about whether the technology will have broader appeal given that many customers are still reluctant to make the switch.

Battery-powered models have been piling up on car lots, dealers say, as EV sales growth has slowed in the U.S. this year. Car companies have been offering a combination of discounts and lower interest-rate deals in an effort to juice demand. But it hasn’t been enough, because buyer reticence extends beyond the price tag, dealers say.

“I’m not hearing the consumer confidence in the technology,” said Mary Rice, dealer principal at Toyota of Greensboro in North Carolina. “People aren’t beating down the door to buy these things, and they all have a different excuse why they aren’t buying one.”

Customers cite concerns about vehicles burning through a battery charge faster in cold weather or not being able to travel as far as they expected on a single charge, dealers say. Potential buyers also worry that chargers aren’t as readily accessible as gas stations or might be broken.

Franchise dealerships fear that the push to roll out new models will inundate them with hard-to-sell vehicles. Research firm S&P Global Mobility said there are 56 EV models for sale in the U.S. this year, and the number is expected to nearly double to 100 next year.

“I start to think, you know maybe we should just all pump the brakes a little bit,” Rice said.

A group of dealers expressed their concerns about the government’s role in pushing electric vehicles in a letter last month to President Biden.

A Toyota Motor spokesman said the majority of dealers have become “increasingly more confident in their ability to sell Toyota EV products.”

At Ford, the company’s electric-vehicle sales are rising, including for its F-150 Lightning pickup, but demand isn’t evenly spread across the country, according to a spokesman.

Dealers say that after selling an EV, they sometimes hear complaints about charging and the vehicles not always meeting their advertised range. In some cases, customers seek to return them to the dealer shortly after buying them.

“We have a steady number of clients that have attempted to or flat out returned their car,” said Sheehy’s LaRochelle.

While EVs remain a small but rapidly expanding part of the new-car market, the pace of growth has slowed this year. Electric-vehicle sales increased 48% in the first 11 months, compared with a 69% jump during the same period in 2022, according to Motor Intelligence. Sales remain concentrated in a few states, with California accounting for the largest chunk, S&P Global Mobility data found.

The cooling growth has raised broader questions in the industry about whether car companies face a temporary hurdle or a longer-term demand challenge. Automakers have invested billions of dollars to bring more EV models to the market, and many analysts and car executives say they remain optimistic that sales will continue to expand.

“Although the rate of growth has slowed recently, EV demand is clearly moving in the right direction,” said General Motors Chief Executive Mary Barra on a recent conference call with analysts. A combination of more affordable model options and better charging infrastructure would help encourage more people to buy electric vehicles, she said.

There are also varying views within the dealer community about how quickly buyers will adopt the technology.In hot spots for electric-vehicle demand, such as Los Angeles, dealers say their battery-powered models are some of their top sellers. Those popular EV markets also tend to have more mature public charging networks.

Selling an electric car or truck outside of those demand centres is proving more difficult.

Longtime EV owner Carmella Roehrig thought she was ready to go full-electric and sold her backup gasoline vehicle. But after the 62-year-old North Carolina resident found herself stranded last year in a rural area of South Carolina, she changed her mind. Roehrig’s Tesla Model S got a flat tire, but none of the stores in the area carried tires for a Tesla. She ended up paying a worker at a nearby shop to drive her home.

Roehrig still has her Tesla but bought a pickup truck for long road trips.

Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment.

“I have these conversations with people who say we’ll all be in EVs in 15 years. I say: ‘I’m not so sure. I’ve tried to do it,’” Roehrig said. “I think you need a gas backup.”

Customers who want to ditch their gas vehicle for environmental reasons are sometimes hesitant, said Mickey Anderson, president of Baxter Auto Group, which owns dealerships in Kansas, Nebraska and Colorado.

“We’re in the Colorado Springs market. If this is your sole mode of transportation, and you’re in a market in extremes of elevation and temperature, the actual range is very limited,” Anderson said. “It makes it extremely impractical.”

Dealers representing around 4,000 stores across the U.S. signed the letter in November addressed to Biden, saying the administration’s proposed auto-emissions regulations designed to promote electric-vehicle sales are unrealistic. The signatories ranged from stores owned by family businesses to publicly held giants such as AutoNation and Lithia Motors.

“Some customers are in the market for electric vehicles, and we are thrilled to sell them. But the majority of customers are simply not ready to make the change,” the letter said.

Some carmakers are pushing back EV-rollout plans. GM said in mid-October that it would delay the opening of an electric pickup plant by a year to late 2025. In response to weaker-than-expected consumer demand, Ford said in late October that it would defer $12 billion of planned spending on electric-vehicle investment.

Since September, dealers on average took more than two months to sell an EV, compared with 40 days for all vehicles, according to car-shopping website Edmunds.

While discounts have helped boost sales of some electric vehicles, they also have led to repercussions for some current owners because it reduces the value of their vehicles, dealers say.

“Most people don’t have the confidence to buy an EV and know what it will be worth in 10-15 years,” said Rice from the Toyota dealership.

It may take some time for the industry to adjust because it is still in an early stage of switching to electric vehicles, Sheehy’s LaRochelle said.

“We’re asking for this market to grow organically,” he said.

NFT Art Exists Digitally. Collectors Want To Put Them On The Wall

Storing art on a hard drive isn’t doing it anymore for collectors.

Concern about electric vehicles’ appeal is mounting as some customers show a reluctance to switch