A South Korean art student has eaten a piece of avant-garde art — a banana taped to a wall — claiming that he was peckish after missing breakfast.
The 2019 work 'Comedian' by Maurizio Cattelan was on display at the Seoul's Leeum Musuem of Art as part of the Italian artists collection 'WE'.
Art student Noh Huyn-soo peeled off the duct tape holding up the ripe fruit and ate it, while his friends recorded a video of the act. He then taped the empty banana peel back onto the wall.
The gallery later replaced the peel with a fresh banana. Management told local media that they would not charge Noh for eating the perishable work.
The student told reporters he saw Cattelan's work as a rebellion against authroity, adding: "There could be another rebellion against the rebellion."
"Damaging an artwork could also be seen as an artwork, I thought that would be interesting... Isn't it taped there to be eaten?" Noh pondered.
Cattelan himself said he had "no problem at all" with how the student consumed his work. He has previously said the substance of the piece was a tutorial he produced of how he made and promoted it.
Noh was not the first person to eat the artwork. Performance artist David Datuna did the same art the Art Basel gallery in Miami after it was sold for $120,000.