A ring was placed on a Maurizio Cattelan sculpture that has been already much talked-about in Italy. It depicts a hand missing all but an erect middle finger. Known as L.O.V.E., it rests in Piazza Affari in Milan, where it was recently unveiled in a public ceremony.
The bejeweling pranksters recorded their iconoclastic one-up in a video posted on youtube. It features the smarmy ’70s rock song “Big Balls” by Aussie rockers AC/DC as a soundtrack. The video shows two ladder-weilding white men in black slipping a square ring on the stately sculpture. The operation is signed by the creative duo Urluck, previously known for their Contenitore Artistico (artistic container) project located in Milan’s Central Station.
La Repubblica reports that Urluck declared itself to be “highly receptive to Cattelan’s L.O.V.E. and its power to draw attention and split the public opinion” over the past months. Therefore, the statement went on, they decided to use it as a “magnifying glass” or starting point for a new work of art. Carefully stressing that their intervention caused no damage to the faux monument, they maintained their ironic spirit of love, saying that they “put a ring on this work of art in order to seal an ideological engagement” on Valentine’s Day.
