The $18,300 ‘Invisible Sculpture’: When Art Becomes Air and Imagination
Greetings Warriors
The art world never fails to throw us a curveball. Just when you think you’ve seen it all — banana duct-taped to a wall, shredded paintings at auction — here comes a story that makes you stop, blink twice, and ask: “They sold what for how much?”
The latest headline: an Italian artist auctioned off an “invisible sculpture” for $18,300.
Yes, you read that right. $18,300. For nothing. Literally nothing.
The artist, Salvatore Garau, calls the work Io Sono (Italian for “I Am”). He insists it’s not “nothing,” but rather a concept — a sculpture made of air, spirit, and imagination.
For some, it’s an absurd stunt. For others, it’s a bold artistic statement. For me, it’s a fascinating look at how far art has come — and how far it might still go.
The Birth of an Invisible Idea
So how does someone even “make” an invisible sculpture?
Garau, 67, is no stranger to conceptual art. Earlier this year, he installed works like BUDDHA IN CONTEMPLATION in Milan and AFRODITE CRIES in New York City — all “immaterial sculptures” marked only by tape squares or circles on the ground.
With Io Sono, he went a step further: there’s not even tape.
Here’s how it works:
The sculpture exists in a roughly five-by-five-foot space in the buyer’s home.
It must remain unobstructed — a blank stage for the mind.
The buyer received a certificate of authenticity and a set of instructions (because even nothing comes with rules).
Garau’s explanation is as lofty as you’d expect:
“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,” he told Spanish news outlet Diario AS.
He went further, comparing it to the divine:
“After all, don’t we shape a God we’ve never seen?”
The invisible sculpture sold for €15,000 (about $18,300) at Italian auction house Art-Rite. It was expected to fetch €6,000–9,000, but bidding wars pushed it higher.
That’s the part that gets people the most: the fact that this wasn’t just an “art stunt” — there were multiple bidders fighting for a piece of nothing.
Which begs the question: why?
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When Imagination Becomes Currency
The easy take is to call this ridiculous. Many online commenters did exactly that.
“So you really just taped a square and called that a sculpture?” wrote one user on the video documenting Garau’s earlier Milan work.
But let’s slow down for a second.
Conceptual art — the kind that challenges what art is — isn’t new. Duchamp put a urinal in a gallery in 1917 and called it Fountain. Yves Klein “sold” invisible zones of immaterial space in the 1950s, complete with receipts.
Garau’s invisible sculpture lives in that tradition.
The idea is this:
The art isn’t the object. The art is the idea.
You don’t see it, but you feel it — or, at least, you’re supposed to.
Garau even said, “It is a work that asks you to activate the power of the imagination, a power that anyone has, even those who don’t believe they have it.”
And in that sense, the buyer didn’t just buy “air.” They bought the right to imagine.
Still, for a lot of people, it’s a tough pill to swallow — because imagination doesn’t usually cost $18,300.
The Internet Reacts: Outrage, Memes, and Shrugs
Of course, the internet exploded when this story hit.
Comments ranged from disbelief to anger to pure comedy.
“$18,000 for invisible art? I’m selling invisible yachts next,” one Twitter user joked.
“Bro, I’ve been making invisible sculptures in my room for free,” another said.
Some asked the obvious: “Can’t you just… not buy it and imagine it anyway?”
It’s easy to laugh — and I did too at first — but the outrage and jokes actually reveal something deeper:
We are uncomfortable with art we can’t “see” or “measure.”
We trust a painting because it’s there. We trust a sculpture because we can touch it. But when an artist says, “This space is the art — imagine it,” it forces us into a vulnerable place.
And vulnerability, especially when tied to money, triggers all sorts of reactions.
The Bigger Picture: The Value of “Nothing”
Let’s zoom out for a second.
Why did someone pay $18,300 for an invisible sculpture?
Because value in art isn’t about material — it’s about meaning.
The Mona Lisa isn’t valuable because of the paint. It’s valuable because of the story, the history, the collective agreement that it’s priceless.
In that sense, Garau’s sculpture is a litmus test: how much do we value the invisible?
We already do this every day:
We pay for NFTs — digital tokens attached to JPEGs that anyone can “see” but only one person can “own.”
We pay for brands — a logo on a bag that costs $2 to make but sells for $2,000 because of what it represents.
We pay for faith — in ideas, in promises, in experiences that can’t be held in your hand.
In that light, $18,300 for “nothing” isn’t as crazy as it sounds.
It’s just… uncomfortable to say out loud.
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Parallels to NFTs and the Digital Art Boom
I can’t talk about this story without thinking about NFTs.
When NFTs first hit the mainstream, people scoffed: “You paid $500,000 for a picture of an ape?!”
The criticism sounded just like the criticism of Garau’s sculpture: “You bought nothing.”
But here’s the thing — NFTs weren’t nothing. They were ownership of an idea, of a digital moment, of a place in a community.
Garau’s invisible sculpture isn’t minted on the blockchain, but it taps into that same energy:
The buyer isn’t buying air. They’re buying a claim — a story, a concept, a piece of the artist’s vision.
The certificate of authenticity is basically the NFT equivalent: proof that you own “the thing,” even if you can’t physically hang it on your wall.
Both NFTs and Garau’s invisible sculpture spark the same debate: what is art really worth — and who decides?
The Warrior’s Takeaway: The Power (and Risk) of Belief
Warriors, here’s where I land on this.
You can laugh at Garau’s invisible sculpture. You can rage about it. Or you can see it for what it is: a mirror.
It forces us to ask uncomfortable questions:
What makes art “real”?
What makes something worth money?
How much of art’s value is material — and how much is belief?
Because that’s what this really comes down to: belief.
The buyer believed in the art enough to pay for it. The auction house believed in the concept enough to list it. The artist believed in his vision enough to create (or not create) it.
And that belief turned “nothing” into $18,300.
For better or worse, that’s the world we live in.
As a warrior, here’s what I see: art will keep testing us. It will keep daring us to imagine, to expand, to question where the line between “real” and “ridiculous” actually is.
Sometimes that’s infuriating. Sometimes it’s inspiring. Sometimes — like with this sculpture — it’s both.
But here’s the truth: art that makes you think, even if you think it’s nonsense, is doing its job.
Because in the end, Warriors, the real sculpture isn’t in that empty 5x5-foot space.
It’s in your mind.
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