A £500,000 sculpture that explores consumption, ritual, and permanence

A beer bottle is often seen as an everyday object. But under the lens of art, it can become a vessel for symbolism, history, and cultural critique. In Oro Azteca, Japanese artist Yutaro Zan Karnalachi transforms a Mexican Charro beer bottle into a sculpture cast in 24-karat pure gold, preserving its exact size, weight, and proportions. The result is a piece that looks familiar—but is functionally impossible: it cannot be opened, consumed, or circulated. It simply remains.

Who is Yutaro Zan Karnalachi?

Born in Osaka in 1994 and educated between Japan, London, and the United States, Karnalachi belongs to a generation of conceptual artists who move between material precision and critical inquiry. His academic background—spanning institutions like the Courtauld Institute of Art and MIT—informs a body of work that avoids immediate spectacle in favor of tension and duality: between object and symbol, history and present, economic value and cultural meaning.

A Beer Bottle Reimagined in Gold

The Charro bottle used in Oro Azteca maintains the precise weight of a standard 355 ml beer. This is not a replica nor an interpretation—it is a physical equivalence. By casting it in solid gold, Karnalachi removes all possibility of consumption and repositions the object within the realm of contemplation.

What was once ephemeral becomes permanent. What once circulated is now suspended in time. Rather than evoking nostalgia, the piece invites a critical pause in the face of consumer culture.

Gold as Symbol: From Ritual to Contemporary Meaning

The use of 24-karat gold—unalloyed and unmodified—is a central part of the work’s meaning. Long before it became currency, gold was a sacred material, valued in ritual and spiritual contexts. In Mesoamerican cultures, its significance lay not in accumulation, but in its eternal and sacred nature.

Oro Azteca reactivates this symbolic memory and confronts it with the contemporary moment: a world where even the most ordinary objects can be absorbed into cycles of luxury, fetishization, and art-market speculation. 

Auction in London: Value as Part of the Discourse

After its exhibition and subsequent auction at the White Glass Gallery of London, Oro Azteca sold for £500,000. Rather than closing the conversation, that figure expands it: the artwork’s economic value is not a contradiction to its message—it becomes a part of the very system it critiques.