An Italian artist sold a sculpture for 15,000 euros. The material of that sculpture: “Air and spirit”

That does not spend too much time without having to put on the table the eternal debate of What is art and what not. This time, an intangible sculpture brings this debate without clear response to the conversations. Is art what one wants it to be art? Well, yes in broad strokes. But there are nuances that this air sculpture is exceeding.

15,000 for nothing. Or for “nothing”, as you look. The artist Sardo Salvatore Garau, born in 1953, is the signer of ‘Io Sono’ (I am), an invisible sculpture, but which, according to its creator, exists because it is made of “air and spirit”. It was auctioned in 2021 and sold for 15,000 euros, but has returned to the present thanks to a viral post of the British medium Pubitythat thanks to its 40 million followers has recovered this Performance Invisible, in a publication that is already approaching the million ‘like’.

With certificate of authenticity. It reads “Intangible sculpture to place in a free space of any hindrance. Variable dimensions, approximately 200 x 200 cm. Work accompanied by an authenticity certificate issued by the artist. Archive work with N. IM5. This certificate It is all the buyer received, and Garau explained That is the void that gives the work its power, because it is able to stimulate the reflection and perception of the spectator.

Intangible art Garau is not inventing anything: Intangible art It is an artistic current that exists since the time of the conceptual art of the 60s and 70s, when it was defended that the work is not manifested through a traditional physical object, but is built with intangible elements such as sound, light, vacuum or energy. Among its most notable growers are Sun Lewittwhich defended that the idea could be the true work of art, or Yves Kleinwhich presented an empty room in 1958, symbolizing absolute immateriality. Klein even sells some of these vacuum zones, underlining its symbolic value.

Art or thymus? A few years ago, an artist sold two white canvases to a museum under the name ‘Take the money and run’: it is another Performance in which a poisonous sense of humor underlies, but It can also be interpreted as art. Although it is undeniable that it is an art that reflects, from the margins, about the commodification of creativity and about the business around artistic creation. “The underlying idea was to show how salaries can be used to measure the value of the work,” said Danish artist Jens Haaning when he delivered the blank canvases in response to an assignment: to recreate two of his previous works.

That is, in that case, delivery and collection were part of the work. It was almost a manifest.

Sources and bananas. Likewise, as a manifesto the famous ‘source’ of Duchamp, an inverted toilet can be interpreted whose real authorship does not finish being clear And that helped to start the eternal debate of What is art and what not. Or the last earthquake that the industry lived, the famous banana attached to a wall with American tapeit was also a clear posture taking about certain controversial issues. Its 6.2 million dollars caught their attention, but everything was part of its creator’s proposal. You can, of course, discuss whether it is a face proposal, but do not doubt its intentionality.

This paints my nephew. The debate on whether conceptual art is more or less valuable than figurative art It will never end. Much more now that artificial intelligences enter Liza and even Human intervention itself can doubt As part of creation. The conversation about what art is and what is not part, in fact, of the conception and discussion about it, and Garau’s sculpture is still an apostille in an eternal controversy.

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