It’s Gold, Baby. But Niclas Castello’s Cube Is Nothing New in Art.

Some visitors in Central Park were swayed by the beauty of the material. “The reflections are incredible,” said Brigitte Bentele, a watercolorist and retired educator, “and putting it there in the snow seems really inspired.” Others, like a private security guard, Jamel Rabel, were dismayed by the gap between the hyperbolic advertisements for the piece — “Never before in the history of humanity has such an enormous amount of gold been cast into a single, pure object” — and its rather more modest presence. “It’s pretty plain,” he said.

I’d say they’re both right. From a few feet away, the top face of the cube looked as slippery and delicate as a sheen of rainwater, reflecting the tree line. Stepping in close, I found a few little black marks left in the soft metal by the compressed sand in which the cube had been molded in Aarau, Switzerland. When the artist’s crew set up pink lights for their camera, the cube seemed to change color from dusky copper to bright yellow. The edges looked sharp but also, somehow, giving. There’s a reason people like gold.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/02/arts/design/gold-cube-niclas-castello.html