The most ludicrous piece of modern art
Art is inherently subjective, with one person’s treasure being another’s trash. For every lover of Quentin Tarantino, there is another who prefers Martin Scorsese, and for every passionate Bob Dylan fan, there are countless other supporters who prefer Davie Bowie. The possibilities are indeed endless, yet there are some things that we can simply all agree are complete rubbish.
Take, for example, the cynical studio production of The Emoji Movie in 2017, a film so dripping in capitalism self-interest that it would depress even the youngest viewer. Or, consider ‘#Selfie’ by The Chainsmokers, a song, that for similar reasons as the aforementioned film, is totally and utterly unbearable, speaking to the sheer narcissism of contemporary society.
The same can be said for the world of art, which was satirised by Ruben Östlund in his 2017 Palme d’Or winner The Square, with creatives asking people to accept the most obscure works as masterpieces.
Well, now we have a piece of art that we can definitively call the most ludicrous of all time, with the 67-year-old Italian artist Salvatore Garau creating an “immaterial sculpture” that simply refers to an empty plinth on which stands absolutely nothing at all. The remarkable piece was auctioned at a price of €15,000 and is named I Am, with the piece being a statement that refers to his own nothingness.
Speaking to the Spanish news site Diario AS, Garau stated: “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…Therefore, it has energy that is condensed and transformed into particles, that is, into us”.
The piece was sold for €15,000 and came with a certificate of authenticity, as well as a set of instructions that asked that the piece be exhibited in a private house in a five-by-five-foot space.
Speaking about the exhibition of his work, Garau added, “When I decide to ‘exhibit’ an immaterial sculpture in a given space, that space will concentrate a certain amount and density of thoughts at a precise point, creating a sculpture that, from my title, will only take the most varied forms”. Then, when quizzed about how he justifies the creation of a piece of work that is essentially nothing at all, he adds, “After all, don’t we shape a God we’ve never seen?”.
The line between art and fraudulence is explored in Östlund’s aforementioned satire, which tells the story of a Stockholm museum that hosts a controversial new exhibit which sees individuals create art in a small brightly lit square. Anyone and anything can inhabit the artistic podium and it’s all taken as authentic, yet is this what we truly believe? Such is discussed throughout the movie, with Garau’s piece feeling like exactly the sort of thing that would be highlighted in the award winner.
