Imagine pointing to the empty space in front of you, claiming that it is worth thousands of dollars, and someone actually buying it from you for that amount. Seems absurd, doesn’t it?
Italian artist Salvatore Garau auctioned an invisible sculpture for €15000 in June 2021. The “immaterial sculpture” is literally thin air. He titled it Lo Sono (which translates to ‘I am’). Lo Sono went up for sale in May at the Italian auction house Art-Rite. The pre-sale price was €6000 but bidders engaged in heavy competition and pushed the price to €15000! The buyer received a certificate of authenticity to make him feel like he had accomplished something by procuring nothing. Garau gave him a set of instructions stating that the sculpture should be displayed in a private house in a 25 square feet area that was free of obstruction. Essentially, the buyer was told that he could pick an empty spot in his house and add a price tag of $18000 to it.
Garau tried to justify his artwork by claiming that “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”. While art is definitely open to interpretation and everyone’s opinions should be respected, being able to justify the existence of an invisible artwork is something that is baffling to most people. ‘Lo Sono’ is not Garau’s only invisible masterpiece. He made a similar invisible sculpture known as ‘Buddha in Contemplation’ supposedly placed in the Piazza Della Scala in Milan. The evidence for this artwork was an empty white circle. Garau’s ‘you don’t see it but it’s there’ justification went above and beyond for his invisible sculptures. He taped a square and called it a sculpture.
I don’t know what is the operating factor that makes Garau think of such an idea, and more importantly, what makes buyers purchase air for thousands of dollars but there is some sort of spiritual justification that makes this all real. This man has managed to win a jackpot by putting in no effort beyond pointing a finger at empty space. The video attached below talks about copyright details and how he escaped legalities related to artwork because well, his sculpture is basically air. The world is becoming more expensive by the day, but to my knowledge, the one element that was still free was air- but I guess Garau managed to put a price to nothing.
