Kicker - Immaterial sculpture

NICK EICHER, HOST: Maybe you recall from 2019 when Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan sold one of his pieces for more than $100,000. It was nothing more than a banana duct taped to a wall.

Well, another Italian artist has bested him.

His, um, sculpture didn’t sell for six figures. It fetched a mere $18,000. But that’s impressive when you consider that the work of art in question doesn’t exist.

Salvatore Garau sold what he calls an “immaterial sculpture.” He says, “It is a work that asks you to activate the power of the imagination.”

Garau says the imagination is the only place in which this sculpture exists.

REICHARD: Why didn’t I have the imagination to think of that?

EICHER: Well, you’re not an artist.

Gaurau says—and I’m quoting here—“The vacuum is nothing more than a space full of energy, and even if we empty it and there is nothing left, according to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, that nothing has a weight.”

REICHARD: Sounds like a lawyer to me.

EICHER: The winning bidder did receive something: it was a certificate of authenticity as well as instructions to display the immaterial sculpture in a five-by-five foot space, free of obstruction.

I think that last part is key. Because when you’re trying to display “nothing,” and “anything” is in the way, then you have “something” and “something” is not “nothing,” and “nothing” is what you want to see. Or not see. Make sense?

It’s The World and Everything in It.

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