On a snowy winter morning, the citizens of New York City witnessed a mysterious gold cube appear in the iconic Central Park in Manhattan. Created by 43-year-old German artist, Niclas Castello, the magnificent gold cube weighs 410-pound, made of pure 24-carat gold that came with its strong security protection. The gold sculpture art is foot-and-a-half in measure and around an inch thick with a hollow core.

The Castello Cube display in Manhattan’s park was reportedly a publicity stunt. The motive was to promote the artist’s new cryptocurrency, ‘Castello Coin’. The artist asserted the artwork to be “a conceptual work of art in all its facets.” He stated that the idea was to “create something that is beyond our world—that is intangible.” According to reports, the work took more than 4,500 hours to create. The gold sculptural installation had its unique process of creation that comprised a handmade kiln to contain the volume of gold. The recasting of the gold required the kiln to be heated at 1,100 degrees Celsius at the Art Foundry H Ruetschi in Aarau, Switzerland.

Castello is a contemporary artist from East Germany, known for his highly-acclaimed cube painting sculptures where he incorporates large oil paintings into three-dimensional sculpture works. Following the outlook of Andy Warhol, his works stand firmly in the spotlight of the consumer world with association to art and community. According to the press note, Castello’s life, determined by the fall of the Berlin Wall, directed him to the Pop Art world, and the Neo-Expressionism of Jean-Michel Basquiat that heavily impacted his imperative art practice that includes sculpture art and paintings. Castello lives and works in between New York City and Switzerland.

Reportedly, LED screens with mysterious black trucks appeared in Times Square, New York, days prior to the gold cube’s single-day appearance displaying the coordinates for its location, N 40° 46′ 22″ / W 73° 58′ 17.″ Additionally, the German artist’s objective was to emphasise the rarity of the gold sculpture art by displaying it for just one day. The contemporary artist's viral sculptural work is currently not for sale. In a change of events, if he were to put the knee-high sculpture for sale in the art market, the price of gold incorporated amounts approximately to a whopping USD 11.7 million.

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The Castello coin ($CAST) is ready to be traded for purchase online at €0.39 ($0.44) each, along with an NFT auction planned for February 21, 2022, through its website. By the reports, Castello stated, "Never before in the history of humanity has such an enormous amount of gold been cast into a single, pure object. Gold - the eternal metal. Symbol of the sun, of light, of the good." The public sculpture’s image posted on his Instagram has received over 22,000 likes.

Post the one-time display at Central Park, and enormous security care, the eminent cube made its appearance at an elite private dinner at Wall Street, reportedly attended by celebrities.

(Text by Vatsala Sethi, Assistant Editorial Coordinator (Arts))