Tonight I attended the "Thursday Night Thing" at the MCASD; I've recently decided to attend as many museum events as I can, because otherwise car talk is going to overwhelm my life and drive me crazy. Tonight's event was an artist's talk followed by snacks and a live DJ. The artist was Peter Siminsky, and he spoke about his current project called "The Neutral Capital Collection." Basically the idea is as follows; Siminsky created his own currency by piecing together collaged bills made from currency world wide. These original collaged bills were then reproduced on a printing press as normal currency would be. The originals were sold to art collectors who then purchased works of art from other artists with them. Siminsky then made a second and third set of bills, and repeated the interactions with art dealers. He also used these bills to purchase his own works of art from fellow artists; to represent the habits of collectors he built custom shipping crates to hold these works of art. To demonstrate that his bills have no real monetary value, other than as barter, he defaced a set of them by using them as canvases. The whole project has multiple levels, but the ultimate goal is to comment on the way that art has become interchangeable with money, and in many ways exceeds the value of simple cash. The trend can be seen in the exorbitant prices that a Vangogh or a Warhol fetch these days, and in how often art fraud or theft are held on the same criminal level as embezzlement or robbery. The MCASD frowns on photography, so I had to be sneaky.
These are the defaced sets of printed bills.
This is an image from my brochure of what the currency looks like.
This is the back of the curator's case...like I said...these photos were taken on the sly.
Also, I bought a new art book, which is always exciting. Louise Bourgeois is one of my favorite sculptors and books about her are kind of hard to come by.
Yes, this is an installation piece using...CHAIRS!!! Another resource for when I rewrite my thesis for grad school, how exciting is this?
