Billionaire tech entrepreneur Justin Sun is suing fellow billionaire David Geffen, alleging that Geffen unlawfully possesses a Giacometti sculpture Sun purchased for $78.4 million. Sun claims that his former art advisor, Sydney Xiong, forged his signature on contracts and sold the sculpture, Le Nez, to Geffen behind his back.
Sydney Xiong, an art-world-savvy advisor widely credited as the director of Sun’s digital art platform, APENFT , suggested he start with the lot on the cover of the Macklowe sale catalogue: Le Nez, a glorious sculpture by Alberto Giacometti, the Swiss artist whose figures of long, frail bodies wracked by the atrocities of World War II made him one of the most celebrated artists of the century. In 2015, the Giacometti bronze L’Homme au Doigt sold to Steve Cohen for $141.
3 million, making it the most expensive sculpture ever sold at auction. There was one problem. Justin Sun had barely even heard of Alberto Giacometti. “Before the auction, he didn’t know anything about Giacometti,” Xiong told The New York Times in 2022. “I tried to educate him and let him know how important the lot was and why we should have it.” When bidding began on the Giacometti, Xiong was reportedly on the phone with Yonnie Fu, the Hong Kong rep in the room at Sotheby’s HQ on York Avenue. After Xiong placed the winning bid of $67 million on behalf of Sun, the billionaire wasted no time in alerting the world. “We got it,” he wrote on X, then known as Twitter, just after the gavel hammered, posting a picture of Le Nez and tagging APENFT. With fees, the cost came to $78.4 million. That exact work is now at the center of an explosive lawsuit that pits two generations of billionaire art collectors against each other. Last week Sun sued David Geffen, alleging that the entertainment mogul and arts patron was in possession of the “stolen” Giacometti sculpture after Xiong allegedly forged his signature on contracts and off-loaded the work behind his back, pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process. The complaint states that the woman who once bid tens of millions on behalf of Sun had “confessed to the crime,” and now Sun wants his Giacometti back. Or if he can’t get The Nose, he wants at least $80 million, which is what he says it’s worth. (Xiong, who is no longer in Sun’s employ, has not responded publicly to the allegations laid out in the suit, and did not respond to multiple messages sent this week.) “Mr. Sun is a victim of theft,” William Charron, his attorney, told me. “The thief has confessed, and the evidence of her theft, including her forgeries and fabrications to cover up her theft, are overwhelming. There would have been no need for Sydney Xiong to forge and fabricate if Mr. Sun had actually been aware and approved of what she was doing. Legitimate art transactions don’t happen that way. For whatever his reasons, Mr. Geffen will not return Le Nez. That is why there is a lawsuit.” Geffen is fighting back. His hard-charging lawyer, Tibor Nagy, said the seasoned mega-collector bought the Giacometti from Sun fair and square, and that this beef is between the crypto tycoon and the adviser he hired to make deals. Dismissing all the allegations that elements of fraud delegitimized the deal, his attorney said instead that Sun has “seller’s remorse.” “Mr. Sun thinks his art adviser should have gotten him a higher price for Le Nez,” Nagy told me. “His seller’s remorse, coming more than a year after this transaction closed, has nothing to do with Mr. Geffen.” The complaint spins a delicious yarn of deceit and avarice in the art-meets-crypto space. And it pits Sun directly against a colossus of cultural philanthropy with his name on museums and hospitals in Los Angeles and a business school building and music halls in Manhattan—a man who, according to sources, spends much of his time on a yacht for which he paid $590 million, Forbes reported. BREAK In October 2023, nearly two years after Sun purchased Le Nez, the work was put on public view at the Institut Giacometti in Paris—in a show named for and centered on the work, sponsored by Sun’s cryptocurrency organizations, TRON and APENFT. Sun posted about the show incessantly, informing his millions of X followers about the joy of seeing the public getting to enjoy works from his collection. “Though valued at $78.4M, its true beauty lies in the shared experience,” he wrote, adding a face-with-sunglasses emoji. Still, he seems to have never quite forgotten about the work’s price tag. The year the show opened, according to the complaint, he floated the idea that he wanted to sell the work, as long as it was for over $80 million, as he later specified, and all in cash. Xiong was the right person to ask. In her years working with Sun she’d become a pretty well-known art world figure, getting profiled on Artnet and appearing on a panel alongside Hans Ulrich Obrist, the ever-present director of the Serpentine Galleries in London. Sun alleges in the complaint that Xiong began to make arrangements with the art dealers David and Cole Tunkl to move Le Nez. David Tunkl had a Los Angeles gallery in the ’90s; a 2001 opening of his lured in celebrity collectors such as Steve Martin, Kirk Douglas, and Mike Ovitz
Lawsuit ART CULTURE LAW JEFFEN GIAOMETTI JUSTIN SUN SYDNEY XION APENFT CRYPTOCURRENCY COLLECTORS FORGERY
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