Monument to Cold War Victory, 2012 to 2014
Aziz + Cucher, est. 1992 by Sammy Cucher (b. 1958 Lima, Peru; lives New York) and Anthony Aziz (b. Fitchburg, MA; lives New York)
Durst lambda print
30 x 50 in
3D printed maquette
9.8 x 17 x 1.5 in
In February of 2012, Ekaterina Rybolovleva, the 22 year old daughter of Russian oligarch Dmitry Ribolovlev, bought a penthouse apartment at 15 Central Park West for 88 million dollars, making it the most expensive apartment ever sold in Manhattan at that time. For the artists, the transaction is a singularly ironic symbol of the outcome of the Cold War, signifying in physical form the stratospherically mobile aspirations of unfettered plutocracy. In response to the ironic “victory” of an open market which quickly consolidated a semi-criminal oligarchy already largely in place under the Soviet Union, the artists proposed a the construction of a vast and negative space. A one-to-one scale model of the floor plan of the penthouse, at a depth of twelve feet, would be constructed in black, highly polished granite, immediately opposite 15 Central Park West, in the park itself. The monument, closed to the public, is viewable from a surrounding platform, rising one foot from the grass of the lawn.
Text by Stamatina Gregory.