NEW YORK, NY.- Fairchain, founded by Max Kendrick and Charlie Jarvis, is a platform dedicated to building a compelling new framework for a more equitable and sustainable art economy, created in partnership with an inter-generational group of artists, including Carroll Dunham, Eric Fischl, Alteronce Gumby, Jillian Mayer, Ludovic Nkoth, Duke Riley, Laurie Simmons, and Hank Willis Thomas.
Fairchain’s title management, authentication, and transaction platform is the first ever to ensure that artists and their galleries receive royalties on all secondary sales, across the globe. The company is a new all-inclusive initiative that applies blockchain technology to streamline and revolutionize the way artists, galleries and collectors make, sell, and acquire art. In tandem with the new platform, Fairchain will also debut its registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit, The Fairchain Fund for Working Artists, which functions as a key stakeholder and which will be endowed by sales on the platform to directly support working artists through artist grants and other initiatives.
“Fairchain is about championing artists. With thoughtful social innovation and next-wave technology, we can solve problems that affect all participants in the art market — artist, collector, and dealer alike,” states Co-Founder and CEO Max Kendrick. “We’re getting out ahead of technological transformations that are already upending the traditional art world, and leveraging them to build a global art market that is more equitable, robust, and accountable to the creative communities upon whom it depends.”
Co-Founder and Vice President Charlie Jarvis says “The genius of the platform is that we are able to apply the concepts underpinning NFTs to the realm of physical art. All the technology has been there, what has been missing is a holistic, yet pragmatic solution. We have spent the last three years working under the radar with an incredible team – of auction, nonprofit, tech, and social innovation veterans as well as artists and galleries – to create intuitive technology that not only meets the reality of the art world of today, but also creates a bold framework for a better tomorrow.”
Fairchain has already partnered with a range of galleries, institutions, art shows, and platforms, servicing sales on Artsy, fair booths and presentations at Untitled Art, NADA Miami, and the 2022 SPRING/BREAK Art Show in Los Angeles, as well as benefit auctions for the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art and The Church arts center in Sag Harbor, NY. For his upcoming solo exhibition at The Brooklyn Museum, Duke Riley will be using Fairchain to register, authenticate, and record provenance for included works, so that future royalties can be dedicated to ocean cleanup efforts.
“It's baffling that visual artists are among the only creators with no claim to their own intellectual property in the case of resale,” states artist Laurie Simmons. “With Fairchain we have an opportunity to solve a problem that has plagued the art market for decades. I’m excited to be part of what Fairchain is offering artists: the ability to track and truly own your work, ensuring that artists, their galleries, and their estates are compensated for secondary sales down the line.”
“The incredible thing about Fairchain is how it aligns interests between artist, dealer, and collector,” states gallerist and Fairchain advisor James Cohan. “Each party is caretaker of an artist’s creative legacy, and has a shared interest in cultivating an artist’s practice and market over the long term. Fairchain puts everyone on the same team in a way that wasn’t really possible until today.”
