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01-12-2024
NEW YORK: A Chinese-born cryptocurrency entrepreneur has followed through on his promise to eat the banana from a $6.2m (£4.9m) artwork he bought last week.
Justin Sun outbid six others to claim Maurizio Cattelan’s infamous 2019 work Comedian, a banana duct-taped to a wall at Sotheby’s auction house in New York.
He ate the fruit during a news conference in Hong Kong where he used the moment to draw parallels between the artwork and cryptocurrency.
The banana is regularly replaced before exhibitions, with Sun buying the right to display the installation along with a guide on how to replace the fruit.
It has been eaten twice before first by a performance artist in 2019 and again by a South Korean student in 2023 but neither paid any money to do so, let alone $6.2m.
“Eating it at a press conference can also become a part of the artwork’s history,” Sun said.
“It’s much better than other bananas,” he added.
The 34-year-old said he was intrigued by the work, admitting he had “dumb questions” about whether the banana rotted.
The New York Times reported a fresh banana was bought for 35 cents on the day of last week’s auction, before becoming possibly one of the most expensive fruits in the world.
Each attendee at the event on Friday was given a banana and a roll of duct tape as a souvenir.
“Everyone has a banana to eat,” Sun said.
Sun runs the Tron block-chain network – a service where users can trade in cryptocurrency.
Cryptocurrencies are digital currencies that operate independent of banks, offering the potential of very secure decentralized transactions.
Sun compared the artwork, and other abstract pieces like it, to NFTs.
These “non-fungible tokens” are pieces of digital artwork that have no intrinsic value, other than that prescribed by people.
NFTs can be traded on platforms like Sun’s.
Last year, he was charged by the US Securities and Exchange Commission for offering and selling unregistered security tokens. Sun denies the charges and the case is ongoing.
This week, Sun disclosed he made a $30m investment in a crypto project backed by US President-elect Donald Trump.
Maurizio Cattelan’s provocative artwork of a banana duct-taped to a wall has fetched $6.2m (£4.9m) at Sotheby’s in New York four times higher than pre-sale estimates.
The auction house says Chinese cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun outbid six other rivals to get the “Comedian” installation of the Italian visual artist on Wednesday.
“In the coming days, I will personally eat the banana as part of this unique artistic experience,” Sun was quoted as saying.
The taped banana now perhaps one of the most expensive fruits ever sold was actually bought earlier in the day for a mere $0.35, according to the New York Times.
“Comedian” was first unveiled to the public in 2019, instantly becoming a viral sensation and also provoking heated debates about what art is.
The installation which has travelled around the world comes with instructions on how to replace the banana whenever it rots.
In fact, the fruit has been eaten not once, but twice.
In 2023, a South Korean art student helped himself when the installation went on display at Seoul’s Leeum Museum of Art. (Int’l News Desk)
