At the world-renowned Frieze London art fair, bidders hoping to buy a painting worth millions of pounds were rudely interrupted by flatulence.
The fart noises were part of a counter-performance outside of the auction house at Freize, with organiser KONN ARTISS also installing five massive blocks of ice.
In front of the fair’s main entrance, visitors were greeted by the 40-stone ice blocks with miniature effigies of Hirst, Warhol, Emin, Koons, and KAWS.
The display was fittingly called ‘ANTI-FRIEZE’, and aimed to capture the ‘tension between value, hype, and decay.’
A spokesperson said: ‘When the market freezes, art melts. It’s not a protest. It’s a reflection. We’re all stuck in the same ice.’
But the part of the performance which turned the most heads was the one ice block containing sculpted excrement, with sounds of fart noises emitting from hidden speakers.
Inside the auction tent, heads turned as sounds of flatulence echoed around.
Some attendees giggled, but the auctioneer kept a serious face as he read out the price: ‘£100,000.’
The spectacle aimed to explore the artist’s exploration of value, vanity and spectacle.
Metro has contacted Frieze for further information on the spectacle.
As in Venice and Washington before, KONN once again used public space and humour to question what, exactly, is being bought and sold when art meets money.
Art auctions have been the focus of other stunts as well – Banksy famously shredded one of his paintings after it was sold for £1,000,000.
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The anonymous street artist stunned bidders in 2018 when his famous Girl With Balloon painting sold for £1.1 million at Sotheby’s in London.
But instead of following standard procedure, the artwork immediately attempted to self-destruct, with the canvas passing through a secret shredder hidden in its frame.
The bottom half of the painting was left in tatters, with only a single red balloon left on the remaining background.
Posting a picture of the moment on Instagram, Banksy wrote: ‘Going, going, gone…’
The sale however did go ahead, and the radically altered painting was put on display at Sotheby’s New Bond Street gallery shortly after the shocking event.
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