Nasan Tur’s Russian Roulette Readymade

Nasan Tur’s readymade sculpture—à la Marcel Duchamp—is a roulette ball resting upon black felt. But is that all?

This charmed playing piece lived a long life at the infamous Baden-Baden casino in Germany, a landmark immortalised thanks to Fyodor Dostoevsky’s untamable addiction to gambling (and chronicled in his 1867 novel, The Gambler). Given the odds, it seems safe to say this ball likely passed through the late writer’s hands; for this reason, it deserves no less of a pedestal.