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June 29, 2006- July 28, 2006
Reception: June 29, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Michael Asente, Ray Beldner, Barton Lidice Benes, Robin Clark, Peggy Diggs, Jed Ela, Stuart Elster, Kim MacConnel, Elizabeth Sisco, David Avalos and Louis Hock, Ken Solomon, Oriane Stender, Mark Wagner, C.K. Wilde
Schroeder Romero
637 W 27th St Peggy Diggs Has Money Hurt You? (2004) |  Jed Ela $10,152 (Offering Bowl) (2004) |  Kim MacConnel Pre 9/11/Post 9/11 (2005) |
 Ken Solomon Am I Worth It (2006) |
Michael Asente embroiders red flames onto dollar bills. While reading Dante's The Divine Comedy, Asente was struck by The Inferno's relevance to the current political and military climate in the United States. In certain passages of Cantos 26 and 27, one can substitute Ulysses and Diomede, who planned the Trojan horse, for President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Asente sees Bush and Cheney as our contemporary "Counselors of fraud" or "Sinners" who would be held in the lowest pits of the inferno.
In his Counterfeit series, Ray Beldner selected well-known 20th century artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Rene Magritte and Carl Andre, and re-made some of their most famous artworks with U.S. paper currency. Each piece - carefully and painstakingly fabricated by sewing together one dollar bills - is as close as possible to the original's scale and dimensions. Counterfeit refers to Beldner's own plagiarism of these masterpieces as well as the conditional nature of the value of art and money.
Barton Lidice Benes used currencies from the world's countries and fashioned from the banknotes small objects depicting foods associated with each country. An English tea bag and French grapes represent some of the more developed countries of the world; a Costa Rican banana and lemongrass from Thailand suggest the more rudimentary staples of developing countries. The disappearance of some of these currencies raises questions of global economy and power.
Robin Clark's labor-intensive works involve scraping away the surface of the bill, selecting details to highlight certain classic aspects of the original design and leaving ghosts of others. The removed ink is then presented in vials alongside the bills suggesting an alchemic transformation or an indication of the arbitrariness of money representation and value.
Peggy Diggs stamps currency with questions regarding the nature of wealth and poverty. The questions were developed after speaking with poor people in Greensboro, NC. From these conversations, the artist devised a series of questions aimed principally at the wealthy. These include: In what ways has money hurt you? What do you think is gained in poverty and lost through wealth? Do you feel the need to be paid for everything you do? The stamps will be provided so that the viewer can imprint their own bills.
Jed Ela intricately weaves together one-dollar bills into sculptures of everyday objects - such as ladders and baskets. He then offers these objects for sale at the value of the amount of money used in each piece and requires that buyers agree never to resell them for a greater value. This agreement repositions the artistic status of these works, forcing them to remain as representations of economic capital.
Through manipulation of scale, visual presentation, and perspective, Stuart Elster achieves an often startling investigation into greater, often subtly political, considerations. Two large scale graphite drawings of George Washington's portrait on the dollar bill represent the only "non money" art in this exhibition. Using a subject quintessentially capitalist and American, his work performs one of the signature operations of Pop Art exposing a system of buried or unconsidered meaning.
Kim MacConnel’s new series of folded bills and watercolor collages focus on a seemingly endless number of American foreign policy and military disasters around the world. He contorts U.S. and foreign currencies to form believable representations of weapons and artillery such as fighter jets, battleships, tanks, helicopters, and bombs. These bills are placed in watercolor landscapes depicting battle scenes - the desert landscape, oceans, and sometimes, Washington, D.C.
Elizabeth Sisco, David Avalos and Louis Hock collaborated on a project titled Art Reembolso/Art Rebate in which they used an NEA grant they received to give signed $10 bills to undocumented workers and asked the workers to sign a receipt for this "rebate". The artists also distributed information about the inequities of taxation for undocumented worker as well as the enormous annual contribution made by such workers. Examples of the rebate receipts and the signed bills accompany video documentation of the public art project.
Ken Solomon's work changes the meaning of an otherwise highly recognizable object. He uses the dollar bill as a medium with which to create a "painting". Hundreds upon hundreds of tiny fragments of dollar bills are collaged together based on hue and tone to create each piece. The dollar is no longer viewed as currency, but becomes a palette that contains a large range of hues and tonal options.
Drawing upon the traditions and techniques of women's handicrafts, Oriane Stender makes exquisitely detailed quilts and weavings out of worn dollar bills. One example is Dinars to Dollars where Stender has woven a U.S. dollar bill with an Iraqi dinar. The portrait heads of Saddam Hussein and George Washington are disjointed and face each other with steely gazes. In Blanked Dollar Stender has added pieces from several bills to make one bill which is void of any representation.
Mark Wagner's collages using the most ubiquitous piece of paper in America are meticulously produced with graphic presentation. In Head and Tails he has collaged two one-dollar bills alternating vertical strips from the front of one bill and the back of another. The result is in one elongated bill - showing the front and back at once - with a vibrating pattern. The preciousness and intricacy of Wagner's collages dazzles the eye.
C.K. Wilde’s delicate collages, composed from countless fragments of currency, both foreign and domestic, are visual evocations of landscapes. Wilde raises important questions regarding our collective obsession with social and economic status, and the perception of value in our relationship to works of art.
As the art critic Dave Hickey has written, art and money have no intrinsic value. When one buys a piece of art, they are simply trading “a piece of green paper, signed by a bureaucrat, for a piece of white paper with a picture on it, signed by an artist.” Art and money are cultural fictions, he asserts, acquiring exchange value through the trust that we personally and collectively place in them. By constructing art that plays at the nexus where notions of economics and culture collide, the exhibiting artists are questioning our assumptions about money, art, and their respective values.
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Also on view in Plus Ultra Gallery and Schroeder Romero's shared project wall: Carlos Motta, A Brief History of US Interventions
SUMMER HOURS: The gallery is open Tuesday through Friday from 11am - 6pm. The gallery will be closed on Tuesday, July 4th. The gallery will be open by appointment only in August.
Art Reviews of Money Changes Everything
| New York Times July 14, 2006 | Ken Johnson | "Using money as raw material in art is not new, but this show’s variety of approaches prompts profitable thought about the circulation of meanings and values. Some works comment on the fraught relationship between art and money...." |
Books and DVDs related to artists in this show
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