Big Bucks was on show at Diemar/Noble Photography in London, Jan 13 - Mar 12, 2011.
PLEASE CONTACT DIEMAR/NOBLE FOR PRINT SALES
[2009, ongoing]
Lightjet / Lambda prints. Hybrid analog/digital process. 40x40 in (ed. of 5+2APs); 72x72 in (ed. of 3+2APs); 12x12 in print-set edition. Printable in high-res up to 110x110 in (280x280 cm) approx.
AWARDS
This work received an Honorable Mention in Magenta Foundation's Flash Forward 2011 and 2 Honorable Mentions in the 2010 International Photography Awards.
____________________________________
Money is among the major abstract concepts permeating our lives. Yet its abstract nature is deferred by established practical routines of using and thinking about it. Banknotes, as tangible arbitrary representations of value, are an exemplary embodiment of the resulting “cognitive gap”.
At the same time, in his seminal essay 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction', Walter Benjamin points to coin minting, i.e. money making, as the first example of mass reproduction of art. An attempt at 'reverse extraction' wouldn't therefore appear completely out of place.
This series of oversize lambda prints (from 40x40 inches and technically printable up to 280 cm in high resolution) intends to give money the abstract treatment it deserves by turning banknotes into large detailed and colorful canvases. Thus, the cult status of money is exploited and subverted on multiple levels: the bills become objects of worship and celebration, totems and tombstones for the notion of big easy money. The images are recognizable as quasi currency, yet due to color shifts, size etc. they do not conform to the value reference system within which they would ordinarily be interpreted. It is a comment on the mutable character of money, its endless transitions to and from various imaginary states (not unlike art itself), serving, among other things, as a metaphor for boom and bust, the bubbles and the crunches.