fine-art
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Gayle Midnight turns a change of scenery into a change of medium
An Iceland sketchbook changed the way Gayle Midnight paints. Her San Francisco studio carries that habit of translation into original art, illustration and design.
ArtGallery and the art of buying without a raised eyebrow
A price tag, three photographs and a way to change your mind. Inside the online gallery that turns buying original art into a more ordinary transaction - and charges artists 35% to make it happen.
1stDibs Put the Flea Market Online. The Hard Part Was the Checkout.
Rare chairs, real money, and the business of getting strangers to trust each other. How 1stDibs turned a Paris shopping habit into a public marketplace - and why shipping quotes now matter as much as taste.
Masterworks
Masterworks is a New York fintech that lets everyday investors buy fractional shares in multimillion-dollar blue-chip paintings by artists such as Basquiat, Picasso, Warhol and Banksy. Founded in 2017 by serial entrepreneur Scott Lynn, the company buys individual artworks, registers each as a public offering with the SEC, and sells shares for as little as $20, then holds the work for several years before selling it and distributing proceeds. It reached unicorn status in 2021 after a $110M Series A and has grown to more than one million members.
TRLab
TRLab is an art-and-technology company that fuses Web3 tools with fine-art expertise to reinvent how people learn about, experience, and collect art. Co-founded in 2021 by Christie's non-executive Deputy Chairman Xin Li-Cohen and CEO Audrey Ou, the platform builds education-driven, interactive collecting journeys with major artists, estates and institutions - including the Calder Foundation, the Chris Burden Estate, Cai Guo-Qiang, Vogue and digital-art organization Rhizome. It has raised roughly $9.2M total, and more recently has begun extending its creative IP into lifestyle goods and immersive experiences.
Audrey Ou
Audrey Ou is the co-founder and CEO of TRLab, a curated platform that fuses NFT technology with blue-chip fine art. Working with co-founder Xin Li-Cohen, the deputy chairman of Christie's Asia, she has built TRLab into a bridge between the traditional art world and Web3 - partnering with artists like Cai Guo-Qiang, the Calder Foundation, and Vogue. A Princeton History graduate with a Columbia analytics degree, Ou was named to the 2023 Forbes 30 Under 30 Art & Style list, Apollo's 40 Under 40 Asia Pacific, and Tatler Asia's Gen.T. TRLab has raised $9.2M in funding.
Advay Mengle
Advay Mengle is a San Francisco Bay Area-based tech founder, engineer, and self-taught fine artist living a genuinely rare double life. As CEO and founder of a stealth-mode startup, he brings over 25 granted patents and deep experience at Google and Microsoft to bear on whatever he's building next. Simultaneously, in 2025 alone - his first year exhibiting - he was accepted into over 18 juried art exhibitions across the US, Spain, UK, France, and Japan, earning an Award of Excellence at Magnum Opus 2026 for his painting 'The City'. Born in Los Angeles in 1989, he holds a degree from MIT and previously served as VP Engineering at Talos Robotics before founding Holvonix LLC, a game and app studio.