images Chia Mi, Gallerist at Mistella Art

Mistella Art was founded by Ms. Mi, a painter (healing artist) who studies and deeply cultivates the positive value brought by the art of painting. The gallery promotes aesthetic life, spiritual health, and social issues through exhibitions, product/space image licensing, and self-media management.

Hi Chia, thank you for your time today! Can you tell us a little bit about how you got started with iStaging?

It’s because of the outbreak of COVID-19. As the strict restrictions during the pandemic significantly influenced personal liberty of movement, people were not able to cope with the anxiety, loneliness and frustration through physical gathering and travel. Thus, we were looking for a way to bring people together to manage all these negative emotions.

It is great to showcase all the artworks from members of Mistella Art on the standard web pages, but it is hard to really create emotional resonance for visitors. We wanted to provide our members with a healing experience through visual presentations on cross-device platforms and iStaging’s solution has perfectly met our needs.

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What was this virtual art exhibition all about?

The focus of our curation was to record and show how people of different ages, backgrounds and physical and mental conditions heal their hearts. Among the participants, there are elders with advanced cognitive impairment, and the works in the gallery record their art-assisted therapy changes from the first to the last class. There are also people who have experienced the issue of life and death, retirees, entrepreneurs, housewives, office workers, etc. Students have the opportunity to use their self-healing creations to resonate with the visitors of the exhibition. A large healing occasion in itself is our greatest achievement.

What have you achieved by using iStaging? What kind of feedback have you received from visitors?

There were more than 1,125 people virtually visiting our exhibition ‘Encountering Beauty x Healing Beauty - A Life Journey’ in 37 days with 99% positive feedback. Most people said that the virtual gallery is beautiful and they’re moved by these artworks. Visitors also said that the viewing distance is quite comfortable. These comments brought us huge encouragement and it proved that what we built was a great success.

Why did you choose iStaging to build your virtual gallery?

When we looked at iStaging, we could immediately imagine what the result would look like and we didn’t have that with any of the other solutions we researched. We were looking for enough wall space, the area shouldn’t be too narrow to allow for freer and more natural movement and we also need beautiful scenery to match with our gallery. iStaging was able to offer all of these elements. Looking up from the exhibition wall, the simple and neat ceiling structure is also interspersed with a high floor-to-ceiling window in the exhibition hall. There is a large open blue sky and white clouds and there are even large lakes and distant mountains. The clear, clean and vast visual experience is very suitable for experiencing spiritual artworks.

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How do you see the future of virtual solutions in the gallery industry?

First of all, physical performances and online performances have their own advantages. I think the focus of the choice is whether it can really achieve the results you are looking for. In the digital world, the experience may be different due to potential equipment and hardware requirements, but we were able to manage this perfectly with iStaging. The tactile experience of art materials is currently something only a physical exhibition can easily achieve. The online exhibition breaks the limitation of time and space and also saves the cost of exhibition materials and the waste generated after the exhibition. I have to say that in the context of time and space like 2022 (the epidemic and environmental sustainability issues), it really is a great solution.

Our purpose today is to create more brand exposure through visual elements, sound and to increase engagement that serves the virtual and physical art collections. Virtual solutions will definitely help with that, especially with what iStaging has done. I very much look forward to the popularization and mass adoption of these technologies to empower people to get close to artworks, host online spiritual gatherings and create more and more of these solutions that will help gallery brokers.

How is the collaboration with iStaging? What do you think about the iStaging service and the support of the team?

The real-time assistance in editing, problems solving and the case sharing from iStaging team allowed us to focus on the contents and the art-viewing experience in the virtual gallery. The overall cooperation with iStaging is really great as the team is reliable and willing to go to great lengths to help customers achieve their goals.

Are you interested in building your own virtual gallery or museum? Watch our latest webinar ‘How to build a virtual museum’ or Contact us for more information.