A pure gold cube worth $11.7M is sitting in Central Park

Living

By Samantha Ibrahim

February 2, 2022 | 7:41pm

One German artist definitely wins the award for thinking outside the box.

A cube made from 186 kilograms of pure 24-karat gold was constructed and dropped in the middle of the park.

German artist Niclas Castello designed the cube, and although the artwork is not for sale, it’s valued at about $11.7 million.

The gold was purchased at $1,788 per ounce, and the full 410-pound art piece even has its own security team!

The box was positioned at the park’s Naumburg Bandshell venue early this morning.

 “[The work] is a conceptual work of art in all its facets.” He said the idea was to “create something that is beyond our world — that is intangible,” Castello told ArtNews in a statement.

A cryptocurrency is also being released alongside the cube, called the Castello Coin. It will be traded as $CAST and is now able to be purchased online at $0.44 each. An NFT auction is also scheduled for Feb. 21.

Gallerist Lisa Kandlhofer noted to the art publication that “the cube can be seen as a sort of communiqué between an emerging 21st-century cultural ecosystem based on crypto and the ancient world where gold reigned supreme.”

The cube was cast at a foundry in Aarau, Switzerland, and required a handmade kiln. The special oven was created in order to hold the large size and volume of the gold.

Extremely high temperatures were also needed to melt the materials, hitting at 1,100 degrees Celsius. The box measures just over a foot and a half on all sides and is only about a quarter-inch thick. 

The glitzy figure will then be unveiled at a private dinner on Wall Street on Wednesday evening.

Castello was born in 1978 in East Germany and focuses on creating contemporary works of art as well as street and pop art.

Much of his art is influenced by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and many of his pieces are inspired by the neo-expressionism era of Jean-Michel Basquiat. He now lives and works in both New York and Switzerland.