Florida artist Tom Miller plans to sue Italian artist Salvatore Garau over claims that art based on “nothing” was his idea first.
Miller is claiming intellectual property over Garau’s $18,000 statue because he also exhibited an empty sculpture called “Nothing” back in 2016 at the Bo Diddley Community Plaza in his city of Gainesville, Florida.
“The space in our world is legitimate to work with as an artistic product. So the idea is fashioning nothing into a sculpture, and that’s what the lawsuit is all about,” Miller explained to Florida news outlet WCJB.
“When I saw [Io Sono], I thought ‘that’s exactly my idea and ideas are important in the world, and recognition for those ideas are important. So I simply wanted that attribution, so I contacted him, he dismissed it away, and then I hired an Italian attorney,” he added.
He also pointed out that, “If you Google ‘Tom Miller Nothing,’ you can easily see I had this whole paradigm sorted out before Salvatore Garau.” Garau first revealed his invisible pieces in February of this year.
Miller has been consistently outspoken over his outrage over the issue, initially taking the fight to Twitter during its $18,000 price tag reveal.
“This artist is absolutely not the first. I am.”
I fashioned Nothing into a sculpture in 2016. My documentary film, "Nothing" won Honorable Mention March 2021 in Asurdo Film Festival, Italy. This event is entirely suspect. This artist is absolutely not the first. I am. @tddafoe https://t.co/MvjdhOIUqV
— Tom Miller (@millerworks) June 7, 2021
Garau has yet to comment on the issue. Io Sono serves as his first sold invisible piece.
“You don’t see it, but it exists; it is made of air and spirit,” the Italian artist explained of Io Sono. “It is a work that asks you to activate the power of the imagination, a power that anyone has, even those who don’t believe they have it.”
