British artist Adrian Wilson has sold the world’s most expensive skateboard on eBay for $20,000.
He calls the board Supreme Mundi and it is made from a round artist’s palette which has the pillar box red Supreme logo emblazoned on the bottom. It’s a fake, of course, and that’s the point.
“This isn't just a usable novelty skateboard,” says Wilson in his artist statement. “This is a commentary on the 500 year wide artistic and financial hypebubble we are in right now.”
Supreme Mundi was inspired by the sale of Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi in 2017 for $450 million and Sotheby's Supreme sale of a collection of skateboard decks to Canadian teenager Carson Guo for $800,000.
"It seemed a perfect combination of two record sales of dubious artwork to roll them into one statement about art and, let's be honest, hyped up names," says Wilson.
The board is fully functional and was ridden by skateboarders in the New York's Lower East Side before going on display at the public Con Artist Collective during the ten-day eBay sale.
The board ‘dropped’, as the Supreme aficionados call it, on eBay on Monday morning and was bought by Jon Satin, a former gallery owner on behalf of a private client. Satin promised to “blow (Wilson’s) mind” with a photo of the board next to the collector’s famous artworks once it is installed.
The financial success of Supreme Mundi is a troubling sign of our times, according to Wilson. “[It] represents the new era of tech fund trustafarian tastemaking art collectors, more interested in social media fame than art history.”
