Red-Chip Artists and Underground Comics Challenge Traditional Artworld Values in New York

A wave of 'red-chip' artists, including Beeple, KAWS, and MSCHF, is challenging the traditional artworld's values, as noted by Artnet columnist Annie Armstrong. This shift was evident in several New York exhibitions in early 2025. At Tutu Gallery in Bed-Stuy, Amos Kang's 3D-printed sculpture 'Bella Boo (2024)'—a cartoonish cockroach—and Yizhi Liu's acrylic paintings of Yoshitomo Nara-esque beings exemplified a born-digital aesthetic appealing to collectors less concerned with art history than entertainment. At Subtitled NYC in Greenpoint, 'New Comic Day' featured underground and outsider artists like Mikael Choukroun, Takashi Nemoto, and Anke Feuchtenberger, whose works recalled Henry Darger. The show highlighted how the blue-chip artworld gradually absorbs fringe movements, as seen with Beeple's institutional survey at the Deji Art Museum in Nanjing. Meanwhile, at Pop Gun in South Slope, Liam Murray's 'Artist Fantasy League (2025)' quantified artworld success through a fantasy sports-style points system, tracking sales, exhibitions, press, and awards for 40 emerging artists. The work, presented alongside Gary Katiya's Oakland Raiders logo paintings, bluntly exposed the metrics driving the traditional artworld. Murray's project suggests that emerging and outsider artists are increasingly aware of these mechanisms and are finding ways to navigate or subvert them.