On Empty Walls, Empty Pedestals, and the Enjoyment of Lack
In May 2021, the Italian conceptual artist Salvatore Garau sold an “immaterial” sculpture titled Io Sono (“I Am”) through Art-Rite in Milan. It fetched €15,000 (about $18,000 USD).
- There was no object.
- No material.
- No form.
The buyer received a certificate of authenticity and instructions to display the work in a 1.5 × 1.5 meter empty space in a private home. Garau described it as composed of “air and spirit,” invoking even quantum language—reminding us that what we call “empty” space is not truly empty.
Predictably, social media responded with ridicule:
- “$18,000 for nothing?”
- “Art has lost its mind.”
But what if this is not absurdity—what if it is structure?
When the Mona Lisa Disappeared—and the Crowd Grew
In 1911, the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre. For two years, the painting was missing. Yet something remarkable happened: people flocked to the museum—not to see the painting, but to see the empty space where it had hung.
They stared at the blank wall.
Why?
Because the absence intensified the presence. The void became more charged than the object itself.
The empty wall became a signifier. Not of what was there—but of what was missing.
Lacan: The Empty Signifier and the Enjoyment of Lack
In Lacanian psychoanalysis, desire is not structured around possession but around lack. The object we think we want is never the thing itself; it is a placeholder—what Lacan calls objet petit a—the cause of desire.
Garau’s sculpture functions precisely this way.
There is no object.
There is only a frame.
A certificate.
A defined space.
The “work” is the void itself—elevated, designated, certified.
It becomes what Lacan would call an empty signifier—a signifier without a stable signified, yet one that organizes meaning around it. The value does not lie in substance; it lies in structure.
The buyer did not purchase matter.
He purchased a position within a symbolic system.
Just as the empty wall at the Louvre intensified fascination, the invisible sculpture intensifies projection. The mind fills the gap.
And here is the paradox: we enjoy this lack.
Lacan calls this jouissance—a strange satisfaction derived not from fulfillment but from the persistence of desire itself.
Kung Fu Panda and the Secret Ingredient
There is a beautiful cinematic analogy in Kung Fu Panda.
Po discovers the legendary “secret ingredient” to his father’s noodle soup. After much anticipation, the secret is revealed:
There is no secret ingredient.
The power was never in the object.
It was in belief.
In symbolic authority.
The blank scroll that Po receives as the Dragon Scroll contains nothing—yet it reflects his own image back to him. The “nothing” becomes transformative because it repositions the subject.
Garau’s sculpture operates similarly. It does not give you an object. It gives you a frame within which your imagination operates.
The emptiness becomes generative.
Conceptual Art and the Value of Framing
This event belongs to a lineage of conceptual gestures—from Duchamp’s readymades to Maurizio Cattelan’s banana duct-taped to a wall. The move is not about craft; it is about designation.
Art becomes what is framed as art.
Garau’s piece pushes this to the limit: even the physical referent disappears. Only the symbolic scaffolding remains.
And yet—$18,000.
Critics ask: “How can nothing be worth so much?”
But markets—financial or artistic—are always structured around signifiers. A share certificate is paper; its value lies in belief and institutional structure. Currency itself is printed fiction backed by collective trust.
The invisible sculpture simply exposes this logic nakedly.
The Quantum Gesture (and Why It’s Secondary)
Garau referenced quantum physics—suggesting that even vacuum contains fluctuating energy. While rhetorically intriguing, this is not the core point. The power of the work is not in physics but in semiotics.
The vacuum is not valuable because of particles.
It is valuable because of framing.
What We Are Really Buying
When someone buys an invisible sculpture, they are not buying air. They are buying:
-
Symbolic participation
-
Cultural capital
-
Conceptual provocation
-
A place within discourse
In Lacanian terms, they are buying the object-cause of desire.
The artwork reveals something uncomfortable: value is never purely material. It is relational, symbolic, and structured around absence.
The Structural Parallel
Let us place the three cases side by side:
In each case, the void functions as a catalyst.
The emptiness does not disappoint—it activates.
Final Reflection: The Power of Nothing
We laugh at the $18,000 sculpture. But we stand before empty walls in museums. We invest in symbolic abstractions. We believe in currencies, brands, reputations.
We desire what is not there.
Perhaps Garau’s sculpture is less a joke and more a mirror. It confronts us with a simple truth:
- The object was never the point.
- Desire circulates around a gap.
And sometimes, the most powerful artwork is not the one that fills space—but the one that reveals how much meaning we pour into it.
P.S
Inspired by FB post.
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