Boston, MA, Oct. 30, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Invaluable, the world’s leading online marketplace for fine art, antiques and collectibles, today announced that it is investing in Artmyn and will jointly distribute the Swiss art tech company’s 5D art scanners to the top auction houses worldwide.
Invaluable is co-lead investor in a $4 million fundraising round for Artmyn that will finance the expanded distribution of its art scanning technology. New scanners – now with infrared capabilities - will begin to be placed in auction houses on Invaluable’s marketplace by year’s end. As part of the investment, Invaluable CEO Rob Weisberg will join the Artmyn Board of Directors.
The move – an expansion of an exclusive year-long partnership between Invaluable and Artmyn - is aimed at dramatically changing how art is experienced, bought and sold at auction, said Weisberg.
“We’re excited to invest in Artmyn because the combination of its incredible technology with Invaluable’s marketplace of the world’s top auction houses will revolutionize the art market. It will allow auction houses to treat every artwork like a masterpiece,” said Weisberg.
“This technology will give our auction house partners a new, powerful and unique tool to win consignments, drive sell-through and vastly improve the digital art buying experience. It adds value at all stages of an auction house sale-cycle. This investment also directly addresses two critical areas in the online art market - transparency and buyer confidence,” he added.
Artmyn’s proprietary hardware and technology captures tens of thousands of photographs of an artwork with different light sources and spectrums. Ultraviolet light reveals restorations and other surface changes that are otherwise invisible to the naked-eye. The new infrared feature will capture underlayers, sketches and markings beneath the visible surface of an artwork.
Artmyn co-founder and CEO Alex Catsicas, said, “Until today in the art world, infrared analysis was reserved for rare works and upon request only. Now we are making it an automatic part of all scanning. It’s completely non-invasive and safe and there is no extra cost.
“It’s exciting because we expect to find unforeseen discoveries – from secret touch-ups, preliminary drawings and hidden signatures or dates to entire paintings beneath the surface painting,” said Catsicas. “This is a major step forward in authentication and the ability to provide extensive, documented information about an artwork. We’re very pleased Invaluable is investing in this effort and look forward to helping auction houses build their businesses.”
Artmyn’s scanners produce an interactive ultra-high resolution view of the artwork with over 1.5 billion pixels and an immersive video that is browsable with different light orientations - visible light, ultraviolet and infrared. The videos offer art owners, auction houses, consignors and buyers unparalleled views and feelings of texture for each scanned artwork.
Romain Monteaux-Sarmiento, Head of Communications and Marketing at French auction house Tajan, one of the first houses on Invaluable to use the scanners this year, said, “Artmyn offers our clients a unique way to showcase artworks online on Invaluable when they are up for auction and hence, to attract more buyers. This technology is going to help create the art marketplace of the 21st Century.”
The scanners capture the DNA of an artwork, generating a digital fingerprint that makes the original impossible to forge, said Catsicas. The digital file facilitates research and identification in case of theft, disappearance or damage. It also allows dealers and owners to monitor the condition of a given artwork over time - after a shipment, a storage or a restoration, among other events.
Pierre-Antoine Héritier, Fine Art restorer at the Geneva Freeport, where an Artmyn scanner is already located, said, “This technology provides me with unmatched tools and a highly accurate way to determine the condition of an artwork before and after transportation or an exhibition. This is crucial information in case of insurance litigations.”
For more information on Invaluable, to view upcoming auctions and shop from galleries and dealers, please visit www.Invaluable.com.
About Invaluable
Invaluable is the world’s leading online marketplace for buying fine art, antiques and collectibles. Working with more than 5,000 of the world’s premier auction houses, dealers and galleries, Invaluable helps buyers from nearly 200 countries connect with the things they love. With best-in-class online bidding technology, along with a fixed-price retail platform, Invaluable provides sellers with e-commerce and marketing solutions, as well as auction management software. Invaluable is headquartered in Boston, For more information, visit www.invaluable.com or follow us on Twitter at @InvaluableLive.
About Artmyn
Born at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, ARTMYN develops sophisticated technological tools that revolutionize the way Art is experienced, promoted and secured on screen. Thanks to its new generation of scanners and algorithms, Artmyn’s technology extracts the unique features of an artwork - its “DNA” – under different light sources, including ultra-violet light. This proprietary technology generates interactive 5D images and movies accessible from any mobile device, as well as unfalsifiable digital fingerprints. When acquiring these features unique to each artwork, a first scan will create a fingerprint allowing for any damage or modification to be automatically detected during subsequent scans, hence easing the authentication process. Headquartered in Lausanne, Artmyn also provides a scanning center under free-trade zone at the Geneva Freeport in Switzerland. For more information, visit www.artmyn.com and follow us on Facebook and Instagram @artmyn.official.