February 16, 2022

The Invisible Sculpture

By Curtis Peter van Gorder

News outlets were abuzz with the story of Salvatore Garau’s invisible sculpture called “lo Sono,” which translates to “I Am.” What made it newsworthy was not the fact that it was invisible, but rather that someone was willing to pay $18,000 for a certificate of authenticity for it. Adding to the hoopla, a Miami artist hired an Italian lawyer to sue Garau for infringement of copyright, claiming that he had had the original idea and had not been given due recognition.

Truth be told, selling invisible objects is nothing new. In the fairy tale of the Emperor’s Clothes, an emperor paid vast sums of money for clothes spun from gold but that were in fact invisible, so when he “put them on” he was in fact naked—a fact that was only pointed out by a child. Everyone else was too afraid to say what they really saw as they had been told that “only fools cannot see the emperor’s new clothes,” and no one wanted to be called a fool.¹

There are many examples of people selling things under false pretenses, such as when Yves Klein displayed an empty gallery and called it “architecture of the invisible,” or Tom Friedman, who exhibited an invisible object atop a plinth, which later sold for 22,325 British pounds.

Sometimes the invisible is replaced with an everyday object like Warhol’s soup can or Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain,” which was a toilet urinal, or the more recent piece entitled “Comedian,” which was three sculptures, each of which was a banana attached to the wall with duct tape. Each “piece” was sold for $120,000 to the Guggenheim Museum of Art.

But back to “I Am.” I remember someone else saying that. Ah yes, it was God speaking to Moses in the wilderness when He appeared in a burning bush.² You see, even God used a visual medium to show Himself. God had told Moses to go back to Egypt and tell Pharaoh to set the Children of Israel free from their slavery. When Moses asked God, “Who shall I say has sent me?” God answered, “I AM THAT I AM has sent me unto you.” Jesus also echoed that phrase when He said “before Abraham was, I am.”³ I am reminded of when Paul went by the Greek altar “TO THE UNKNOWN GOD,” which was perhaps just an altar with nothing on it. Paul told those present at the altar, “Him we declare plainly to you.”⁴

Have things changed since then? Do some people today worship the unknown or nothingness? Some religions’ aim in life is to attain a state of eternal nothingness. It is interesting that the name of the artist who created the invisible sculpture, Salvatore, translates as salvation. If we reject the salvation offered us through Christ, what other salvation is there? None.

When asked about his piece, he defended it by saying, “You don’t see it, but it exists. It is made up of air and spirit. After all, don’t we shape a God we’ve never seen?” But Salvatore, we have seen Him; that’s why Jesus came as the incarnation of God. John calls Jesus the “Logos,”⁵ which one source defined as “the soul of the universe” and the Bible as “God made flesh,” and who lived among us.⁶ When talking with the learned Nicodemus, Jesus used the wind as an example of the Spirit.⁷ We can’t see the wind, but we can see its effect on all that it moves. It affects the weather and can be measured in wind speed and pressure. So, too, we can see the effect that the Spirit has on our lives through its fruits—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.⁸

When thinking about the price paid for “lo Sono,” I wondered what else could be done with $18,000, so I asked my friend in South Africa who sponsors children who are too poor to afford schooling.⁹ He told me that $18,000 would enable 50 children to go to school for a year. It would pay for all of their school supplies, books, uniforms, and lunches. Now that is something we can see, and the influence in their lives will live on for eternity.

Even though this sculpture seems to be a joke, we can hope that this artist has brought awareness to the invisible, and as a result that perhaps some people will reflect on the reality of a world they cannot see with earthly eyes.¹⁰

Salvatore presents us with an invisible sculpture of the invisible, but Jesus made the invisible God visible to us so we could love and understand Him better. “He [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.”¹¹

¹ Link to a theater production of the Emperor’s New Clothes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CX1Dx-5k1k.

² The story of Moses and the burning bush can be found in Exodus 3.

³ John 8:58–59.

⁴ Acts 17:22–31. Note: An altar to the unknown god was discovered in 1820 on the Palatine Hill of Rome.

⁵ Meaning of ‘logos’: https://www.britannica.com/topic/logos.

⁶ John 1.

⁷ John 3.

⁸ Galatians 5:22–23.

⁹ www.familymission.net.

¹⁰ 11 verses on God being invisible to us: https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/God,-Invisible.

¹¹ Colossians 1:15.

Posted in: guest contribution, holy spirit, salvation