David Zwirner sold a Jeff Koons sculpture for $8 million through the gallery's online showroom. - Artsy

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A Jeff Koons sculpture sold for $8 million through David Zwirner’s online digital showroom this week. Balloon Venus Lespugue (Red) (2013–19), part of Koons’s “Celebration” series, marks the highest sale price for any single artwork sold online by the gallery, and is on view as part of “Studio: Jeff Koons,” the gallery’s online exhibition highlighting the prolific artist’s process.

Running concurrently with the online Koons showroom is “Basel Online: 15 Rooms,” the gallery’s presentation for Art Basel’s latest online edition. “15 Rooms” brings together works by 15 artists, including historical works by Josef Albers and Joan Mitchell alongside contemporary artists such as Kerry James Marshall and Josh Smith. It marks the gallery’s most valuable viewing room to date, with an estimated total value of $28 million. Having opened to VIP collectors on Tuesday, June 16th, as of Thursday morning, 10 out of the 15 works have already sold through the Zwirner platform. Highlights include Albers’s City (1928/1936), priced at $1 million; Kerry James Marshall’s Untitled (Blot) (2015), sold for $3 million to an American museum; Joan Mitchell’s Pastel (1991), sold for more than $1 million; and Wolfgang Tillmans’s paper drop (passage) I–V (2019), which sold for $500,000.

The $8-million Koons may well be a record for any online viewing room sale to date. Rival mega-gallery Gagosian has reported multiple six- and seven-figure sales through its own digital portals—including a $6-million Albert Oehlen painting last year, and a $5.5-million Cecily Brown painting last month.