Michael Kodysz writes:

The fun thing about conceptual art is that it's totally easy to create. You can say something about the increasingly virtual way many of us experience the world, and the explosive popularity of NFTs (nonfungible tokens) - or seem to say something profound, anyway - just by staging a Central Park happening around a knee-high cube of 24-karat gold.

At least, that's what the German pop artist Niclas Castello has done. His cast from more than 400 pounds of Nevadan gold, appeared in a patch of icy slush opposite the Naumburg Bandshell on Wednesday, preceded by an over-the-top marketing campaign that included a wraparound ad in that morning's edition of The New York Times. Related NFTs from the artist and even a new digital currency, Castello Coin, will drop later in the month. The artist did privately presell enough of the coins to finance this project, according to Marina Dertnig, a member of the production team. The cube is not solid all the way through: it has a hollow core. But the gold alone is worth more than $10 million at current prices.

When I visited, the cube was surrounded by a steady trickle of gawkers, some of whom had come to see the art and others drawn by the crowd itself. said Isabel Robin, an actor and tour guide.

After all, the last time New Yorkers got to see such a sizable chunk of gold in public was in 2016-2017, when Maurizio Cattelan installed his 18-karat gold toilet, at the Guggenheim Museum.

What the really speaks to is the self-sustaining power of capital. If you have the resources to get hold of $10 or $11 million dollars' worth of gold from a UBS Bank in Switzerland - as Castello did - and then pay a centuries-old bell foundry there to shape it into a cube, and finally to ship this cube to the most visible park in the finance capital of the Western world, you can get people to look at it, talk about it and review it - and then, in what is shaping up to be the new gold standard, sell the whole experience as an NFT.

Michael adds:

To read the complete article, see:
It's Gold, Baby. But Niclas Castello's Cube Is Nothing New in Art.(https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/02/arts/design/gold-cube-niclas-castello.html)

And another story on Mashable:
That viral gold cube is actually pretty small. Oh, and it's hollow.(https://sea.mashable.com/life/19192/that-viral-gold-cube-is-actually-pretty-small-oh-and-its-hollow)

And the infographic:
If all the gold ever mined was melted into one solid cube, this is how big it would be(https://imgur.com/5Wfwk7f)