NO, 30G ART'S NOT IN BOX - IT IS BOX

EMPTY 'CARDBOARD' TO FETCH BIG BUCKS

Last updated: 4:57 pm
August 24, 2009
Posted: 2:40 am
August 24, 2009

It doesn't come filled with $100 bills. So why is this box worth $30,000?

Because it's not just a cardboard box. It's a work of art.

Titled "Brillo 5," the box is the work of London artist Gavin Turk, who -- along with such figures as Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin -- is part of the Young British Artists scene that emerged out of Charles Saatchi's famed gallery in the 1990s.

Now, it's expected to fetch the huge sum at Christie's postwar- and contemporary-art sale on Sept. 23.

According to Christie's, the bronze piece "is an ironic and ambiguous work that is essentially a copy of a cardboard box."

Turk was traveling and could not be reached for comment, but his studio manager, Dominic Berning, was not surprised by questions about what made a phony cardboard box such a valuable piece of art.

"It's a question people have been asking forever," he said.

Also on sale is a discarded shutter -- an early work by renowned New York conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner.

He hit upon the idea for the untitled 1961 piece when he found the shutter in the trash on Canal Street.

"It is not quite a found object in that I stripped it and painted it," Weiner, 67, told The Post.

"I just used the shutter as a support structure rather than stretched canvas," he said.

"At the time, it was the highest form of abstraction I could reach."

Now, nearly 50 years later, it is expected to take in between $20,000 and $30,000 at the auction.

"At today's market values, it's a bargain," Weiner insisted.

Average New Yorkers found it hard to believe anyone would spend that much on such "art."

Francesca Baez, 20, of The Bronx, said, "The box must be made out of gold, or a celebrity owned it -- like Angelina Jolie discarded the box, and she kept her underwear in it."

As for the shutter, Jennifer Nazario, 25, also of The Bronx, noted, "People do spend a lot on windows."