With contributions by artists Marco Cassani, Paolo Cirio, Goldin+Senneby, Igor Grubić, Michal Helfman, Agnieszka Kurant, Navid Nuur, Pratchaya Phinthong, Ana Prvački, David Rickard, Miri Segal, Slavs and Tatars, and Jan Tichy, curated by Lucie Fontaine.
The etymology of the word “currency” relates to flowing, running, and circulating.
Aligned with this liquid condition, ₡ U R ₹ € ₦ ₢ ¥ brings together works that deal with money as a channel, money as a concept, money as a formal (or informal) structure.
In the United States, the birth of Conceptual Art overlapped with the end of the Gold Standard in 1971, and since then, the entwinement of art and finance has become evermore abstracted. The artworks assembled in ₡ U R ₹ € ₦ ₢ ¥ manifest a double value—that of the artwork on the market, and that of the money and materials employed to make this work. From Agnieszka Kurant’s representation of multiple forms of currency to Michal Helfman’s drawing inspired by the greenish imagery of the US dollar and Pratchaya Phinthong’s installation around the exchange of rice in his native Thailand; from Paolo Cirio’s imagination of a new virtual currency to Goldin+Senneby’s bound documents of confidential trading strategies, acquired in exchange for artworks. These artworks perform in various ways the acrobatics of the complex relationships between art and money.
₡ U R ₹ € ₦ ₢ ¥ builds upon Lucie Fontaine’s previous show Soft Shock, which revolved around the origins and philosophy of Bitcoin.
Press preview: 01 March 2019, 5 PM
Opening: 2019-03-01 18:00:00