Justin Sun, the entrepreneur who acquired for 6.2 million dollars (more than 5.8 million euros) the work of Maurizio Cattelan, a banana taped to a wall, ate the fruit, under the eye journalists, in Hong Kong this Friday, November 29.
“It’s much better than other bananas,” said Justin Sun as he bit into the fruit he acquired for $6.2 million the previous week in the form of a work of art. “It’s really, really good,” he added.
The sale of this work of art on November 21 sparked many comments and questions. Baptized Comedianthis work by Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan, a simple banana taped to a wall, saw its price rise during auctions in New York organized by Sotheby’s, reaching $6.2 million.
The buyer, Justin Sun, founder of the cryptocurrency platform Tron, at first “incredulous” in the first seconds after winning the auction, then realized that “this could become something important”, mentions the Guardian this Friday. He then indicated that he was going to eat the banana.
A roll of tape and a banana
He therefore kept his promise, and organized the tasting this Friday at the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong, in the presence of journalists. He compared this conceptual art to NFTs, non-fungible tokens, these digital certificates of authenticity (or digital title of ownership) which is attached to a digital file, which were reselling at a high price a few years ago.
“Most of his objects and ideas exist as intellectual property and on the Internet, as opposed to something physical,” he said.
The spectators who attended the tasting each left with a roll of gray tape, the same one that held the banana on the wall, and a banana.
The work of the iconoclastic and provocative artist Maurizio Cattelan, which exists in three copies, is supposed to question the notion of art and its value. She has been talked about a lot since her first exhibition in 2019 in Miami, where another artist ate her to denounce its price, at the time $120,000. Another copy was donated to the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
