Central Park entered a Golden Age Thursday, as German artist Niclas Castello unveiled a conceptual art piece, a cube of 186 kilograms of pure 24-karat gold.
The Castello CUBE, as its being called, was wheeled into the Park’s Naumburg Bandshell this morning at around 5 a.m. The 410-pound piece is, based on the current price of gold, worth around $11.7 million, or $1,788 per ounce.
But don't get any ideas, as it will be flanked by a heavy security detail until the day’s end, and then will be whisked away to “a private dinner on Wall Street, where numerous celebrities are said to be attending,” according to ArtNet.
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Billed as a “socle du monde” (base of the world) sculpture, there’s no further information about where the Cube will land after that, which makes sense, as it’s pretty dang heavy and it probably takes a lot of planning to move it.
The Days Were Golden
Castello made the cube in a specially designed foundry in Aarua, Switzerland, which was capable of reaching the 1100 degrees Celsius needed to melt the gold.
The artist has long been working in the conceptual realm, and claims influence from Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol. Like them, he draws heavily upon pop culture to comment on consumer culture, and how art, commerce and the wealthy are all bound together in the post-modern age. (Several MFA students are no doubt already at work on thesis papers about Nouvelle Cubism.)
Of Course There’s A Crypto Tie In
Castello told ArtNet that his goal with his cube “create something that is beyond our world—that is intangible.” The thing is, while the cube is huge and weighty with meaning, it’s still a tangible object. If not for the security detail, you could touch it, thus reaffirming its place in our physical world.
But you know what is intangible and beyond our world? Cryptocurrencies and NFTs, of course.
So as with almost anything these days, it probably goes without saying that Cube is spinning off both. The Castello Coin, which will be traded as $CAST, is available for purchase online at an initial price of $0.44 each -- but not to Americans and only if you pay in euros. An accompanying NFT auction is scheduled for February 21, so you can bring a bit of that conceptual shine to your mobile phone’s meta wallet.
