🔥 Invisible Deals Only + Roby Dwi Antono

Sign Up | Sell Your Art | Advertise | Community

HEY Y’ALL!

Thanks for all the great feedback on the M. Florine Démosthène piece I shared last day!

🔥 ICYMI – Catchs from the Last Weeks:

1. Ad Minoliti, Teteritas, 2021 - priced at £21,500

2. M. Florine Démosthène, Contrite, 2018 - priced at £7,000

3. Mark Tobey, Untitled (Black,White and Red), 1965 - priced at £13,000

Today we have Roby Dwi Antono, a pre-hype print from 2016 with eerie charm and zero auction noise. Plus, invisible deals happen before booths.

-Today’s Catch-

Roby Dwi Antono

💭 My 2 Cents: This is Roby before the hype. Hanan came out in 2016—way before the Tokyo takeovers and Almine Rech polish—and it shows. Less about slick market positioning, more about raw melancholia and those massive, haunted eyes. If you're into collecting early signals, this one’s got real pre-heat energy. It’s a print, yeah, but from the era when Roby was still finding his visual rhythm, not yet over-merchandised, not auction-fed. And at £1,050? That’s basically lunch in Mayfair.

🔑 Key Numbers: 50 editions, 50x50cm, two-color screenprint on decent Somerset paper. Antono’s record sits around $320K for a painting, but the print market saw some frothy resale in 2022 before cooling off. Still, this piece is from before all that chaos. You’re not paying a post-bubble tax here.

🧠 Why It’s a Smart Pick: You're buying a timestamp. A moment before Roby hit the speculative circuit. If he goes the Nara route, early editions like Hanan will age well. If not? You still own one of the cleanest, most emotionally loaded images in his archive, at a price that won’t make your lawyer nervous.

Turn Art into an Asset Class

Each week, I open five private strategy calls for collectors who want their next acquisition to work harder — capital appreciation, liquidity, hard data, zero guesswork.

✅ 30-minute 1-on-1 portfolio audit: we map your budget, risk, and exit horizon, then pinpoint specific artworks currently on the market.

✅ Two months of Artscapy Club membership — free. Early-access deals, price indices, peer portfolio insights. Regular price: $120. You pay $0.

Here’s what a collector messaged me after our call last week:

Five spots only. Once they fill, next availability is June.

-In a Minute-

🔥 Words I Like: backchannel, escrow, ghost-bid

Invisible Deals Only

There’s no mystery here. The best works don’t hit the fair booths. They hit WhatsApp two days before VIP preview and vanish before the journalists even show up.

If you're still shopping wall-to-wall at TEFAF or Frieze like it's 2017, you're buying after the dealers are done making real money. The fair is marketing. The deals? Already settled.

What you need is backchannel access—encrypted group chats, pre-fair PDFs, and the “library view” that only two clients get before the PDF even drops.

Galleries don’t like to admit it, but over 50% of their fair inventory gets placed via chat or DM. You don’t get invited to that thread by saying you “love the artist’s vision.”

You get in by moving fast and offering something—cash, comps, or connections. Send a one-pager on the artist’s secondary history. Offer a floor price. Be useful.

Also, wire a 10% deposit within hours or forget the next deal. No one needs a maybe-buyer in the backroom.

Curators still anchor the game. If you’re tracking when MoMA or M+ books a studio visit, you’re already ahead. Book the slot right after them.

Every serious collector I know has their own CRM: gatekeepers, preferred mediums, last deal value, and response time. Start yours now.

Private sale desks at Christie’s and Sotheby’s are booming. Why? Speed, discretion, and leverage. They’ll underwrite your loan, escrow the deal, and kill the comps so the piece never hits Artnet.

JPEG dilution is real. Don’t forward unwatermarked files or they’ll ice you out next drop. Want the real stuff? Get a courier, not a screenshot.

And please, don’t flake on a soft commitment. Word travels fast. Screw one gallery and you’re out of five group chats by morning.

The invisible deal flow isn’t romantic. It’s mechanical. Velocity + access = opportunity. Everything else is PR.

-Whenever You Are Ready-

Here are 3 ways I can help you:​

1. Serious about collecting? Join Frame&Flame Circle, my exclusive WhatsApp group for top-tier art connections. Apply now!

2. Get in front of my audience - With more than 10,000+ newsletter subscribers and 200k+ Instagram followers, my team and I work with dozens of partners in unique ways to help them grow. Interested in a partnership, tap here.

3. Don’t gamble on your art investments. Get a free advisory consult and 60-day membership at Artscapy—no guesswork, just expert guidance.

See you soon!

-Alvaro (@theartmarketguy)

Find Me On Instagram
Find Me On LinkedIn

P.S. I'd love your feedback. Tap the poll below or reply to this email.

Disclaimer

Not financial advice. Frame&Flame is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions.