Who Will Be Stuck With Leo DiCaprio’s Hanging Endangered Shark Chair Next?

a plush shark embroidered with graffiti and save the earth type messages hangs from a two-point harness, its mouth wide open because that is where you're supposed to sit. it is a hanging chair, with a giant red tag/label from the artist, porky hefer, srsly, and the leo dicaprio foundation, which i guess underwrote the cost of this, and would have been the recipient of some portion of the net proceeds of its sale in 2018. but not of the auction in feb 2025 where it's getting dumped. image via milleabros
current bid, $1,900 [SOLD FOR TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS LMAO]

There’s an auction going RIGHT NOW, and if you hurry, you could be the one who gets stuck with this Endangered Shark Hanging Chair by South African white guy Porky Hefer, which the Leo DiCaprio Foundation exhibited at Design Miami/Basel in 2018, alongside a bunch of even bigger Endangered Animal As Furniture objects.

a low platform and a mushroom colored corner with a deactivated flatscreen at the design miami/basel fair in 2018 are the setting of this press photo of five giant, shaggy and/or plush furniture objects in the shape of endangered species, including three hanging: a sloth, a blue whale, a great white shark; and two flop lounging: an orangutan that wouldn't fit in a sprinter van, and a polar bear on its back in a nsfw way. the objects were made by a white south african artist who goes by porky hefer, which may be his name, and it was organized by some art advisory people, and sponsored by the leo dicaprio foundation as some sort of greenwashing thing, where some of the proceeds of sales of these monstrosities went to leo's ngo, but what happens if they don't sell? these ed. 1s sit in storage for seven years and then turn up at a random auction. which happened to the shark as i type this in feb 2025. image by james harris via wallpaper magazine, btw, what a commendation of journalistic integrity. but at least pr photos don't get deleted after the license expires in a year, so thanks for that
James Harris had to photograph this, and Nurit Chinn had to rewrite the press release under their own name for wallpaper*, maybe art journalism is the real endangered species here, people

It’s ed. 1/3, and let me guess that there are no ed. 2 or 3, and someone associated with this Miami PR stunt got tired of paying their shark storage unit. On the bright side, this is the smallest one. Go for it!

[two weeks later, now we can say it for sure update: the shark and the whole auction were from client fund-spending art advisor Lisa Schiff. They just disclosed it on the latest edition of The Art Angle podcast. Congratulations on the impeccable provenance, shark winner!]

Lot 197 | Porky Hefer, hanging chair, 2018 [milleabros via greg.org hero jack]