No Buyers Yet For Charlie Kirk Statue, Sculptor in Debt

Sculptor Sergio Furnari spent his own money creating a sculpture of 👤Charlie Kirk as an homage to free speech.

Now that the sculpture is near completion, Furnari is $100,000 in debt and there are no buyers in sight for the non-commissioned piece.

The Italian-born artist, who made the piece out of steel and resin, said he made it more as a monument to free speech and less as a monument to Kirk, co-founder if Turning Point USA, who was shot and killed last September.

“I wasn’t a fan of Charlie,” Furnari told The Guardian. “Like, one thing that I couldn’t stand about him while he was alive [was] when he was talking about Palestine. ‘Oh no, Palestine doesn’t exist.’ I thought: ‘Well, this guy must be out of his mind.’”

But Furnari was moved by Kirk’s murder and likened it to the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lennon.

Funari hoped the statue would raise “millions” of dollars. Instead, he said he has been inundated by messages from people saying they intend to urinate on the sculpture he intends to display in Times Square on Sept. 10 the one-year anniversary of Kirk’s death.

Now, the bronze-colored statue sits in a New York City art studio, holding a microphone and wearing a sweatshirt that says “FREEDOM.”

Watch:

https://x.com/FoxNews/status/2078125510542991390?s=20

Furnari is currently using an online fundraiser to try to recoup costs for making the statue and to send it on a U.S. tour. As of Wednesday morning, it has raised $8,675 toward its $150,000 goal.

To add injury to insult, Furnari broke his foot working on the statue by tripping over a roll of tape in his studio.

“Is it cursed? Maybe. I don’t know,” he told the Guardian.

Furnari has created sculptures of soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo and a life-size installation of the iconic 1932 photograph “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper.”