A New Deal Exhibition Catalog

Peter Simensky, Neutral Capital 500 (Conjurers), 2008

33 Clinton St Brooklyn, NY 11201 briconline.org/rotunda

ANAIS DALY

JESÚS JIMÉNEZ

FINE ART ADOPTION NETWORK

JON KESSLER

FUNDRED DOLLAR BILL PROJECT

ANISSA MACK

DAVID GREG HARTH

PETER SIMENSKY

JONATHAN HERDER

MARK WAGNER

Curated by Baseera Khan January 21 – March 7, 2009 BRIC Rotunda Gallery “A Transcendent Financial Analysis: Art, Currency, and Presidential Legacy”

by Johanna Taylor

MARK WAGNER Buying the Brooklyn Bridge, 2008

A New Deal, Art and Currency highlights relationships between American presidents and the economy, while observing how these relationships affect art-making. This exhibition takes its name from the social and economic reforms implemented

by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1930s. For better or worse, each president affects the course and stability of the economy, and likewise, the changing economy affects the stability and reputation of each president.

Artists in this exhibition play within the space of literal and imagined artifacts of currency and alternative methods of exchange to push social protest and reconsider material value. The participating artists deal with manipulating and erasing, recreating, bartering and exchanging, collecting and commemorating, all to address these intrinsic relationships.

Baseera Khan Curator

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A Transcendent Financial Analysis: Art, Currency, and Presidential Legacy Johanna Taylor

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he world is in constant transition. While some things are immediately forgotten, others become entrenched in collective memory.

Individuals may leave distinct impressions of personality traits or talents just as time periods are remembered by economic, social, or historical landmarks. Presidents and other political leaders are iconic examples of how our fickle collective consciousness dictates the lasting historical record. Often, the success or failure of the economy and its influence on social welfare of citizens determines presidential legacy. The artists in A New Deal, Art

and Currency address personal connections to historical figures, nation, currency, and exchange, through a range of art practices.

D AV I D G RE G H A RT H I AM OIL, 2006

Some artists reference physical paper currency as a point of inspiration, using it either as the subject of their work or the media for creation. These artists strip currency of its economic value and place it at the core of their art practice to expose a new aesthetic form.

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JESÚS JIMÉNEZ $100,000 Dollars, 2006

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esús Jiménez photographs stacks of Mexican peso bills at extremely close range so that the distinguishing details of the bills are not disclosed. Each photograph in the series is titled in reference to the amount of currency in the stack: $8,080.00, $33,066.00, $2,173.00. Jiménez has a personal and experiential connection to the bills depicted in $100,000 Dollars. Mexican workers in the United States sent this money to their families in Michoacán, Mexico, where Jiménez was born and raised.

Jiménez photographed the money right after its recipients exchanged it for Mexican pesos. The staged moments are captured in time, remaining stagnant even though the currency likely returned to circulation soon after they were photographed. Through Jiménez’s intensely focused im-

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ages, the multicolored stack of money transcends its role facilitating the economy to become an aesthetic wonder at close range.

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ince the 1980s, Jon Kessler has studied American mass-media’s obsession with violence, fame, disaster, and sex. He extends his infatuation with this subject matter in a recent, ongoing series of works on paper. Kessler creates portraits by appropriating images found in fashion, popular culture, and political media sources and collages them together. These recent works pointedly question America’s obsession with power and the prolific images of violence and objectification in the media.

In Couple (2008), Kessler collages shredded U.S. bills, making money central to his appropriation process. By shredding the bills, he renders them useless in the monetary economy. By adding manipulated currency as artistic medium, Kessler defaces his appropriated mass-media images with government-sanctioned printed material that simultaneously exploits his subject further while reigning in the faces below. As a whole, the series confronts the issues within the mass media that threaten to undermine the American democratic system.

JON KESSLER Couple, 2008

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idely recognized for his currency collages, Mark Wagner (illustration, page 2) uses fragments of government-issued currency to form related socio-political narrative works on paper. Wagner mines the dollar bill for material, appropriating its symbols, perception in society, and monochrome color palette. Often he selects historical icons, mythological tales, as well as historical symbols from art and architecture as his subjects. Buying the Brooklyn Bridge (2008) reimagines George Washington, positioning him as a sailor crossing the Brooklyn Bridge while two hands jointly grasp either end of a bill in the foreground of the image. The collage transforms the dollar bill from a mere economic pawn into representational imagery that entices the viewer to question our perceptions of currency and its relational significance to history, culture, and art.

American presidents are figureheads in our collective memory. Throughout A New Deal, artists reference presidents and other iconic political figures in U.S. history in celebration of their lives and contribution to creating our contemporary society.

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nais Daly recreated to scale Abraham Lincoln’s tomb, a memorial to the great American president and a symbol of inspiration. The mausoleum at Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield, Illinois, houses Lincoln, his wife Mary and three of their four sons. Sculptor Larkin Meade designed the tomb which features Lincoln statuary and a central obelisk. Daly fabricated her monument out of plaster and drywall cast in the form of individual Scrabble letter pieces,

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Lincoln Tomb, 1860–74.

Courtesy David Blanchette, Illinois Historic Preservation Agency.

meticulously placed next to one another to spell out quotes from Western philosophers.

Language was an invaluable instrument for Lincoln and remains critical to future generations in understanding his legacy. The Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., is inscribed with two of Lincoln’s speeches and has served as the backdrop for countless other A N A I S D A LY orators including MarTomb of The Great Emancipator, with quotes from different tin Luther King, Jr. By figureheads (detail), 2008 encasing the tomb in Scrabble letter-spelled quotations, Daly has made an intensely personal commemoration to the Great Emancipator that inspires others to utilize language towards affecting social change.

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ith equal attention dedicated to historical accuracy and philatelic devotion, Jonathan Herder’s Stampology series collages fragmented postage stamps primarily from the 1940s through 1970s to create idealized historical windows. Stamps are a governmentally sanctioned form of currency, purchased with money, and accredited with value to sends mail. Herder is devoted to his source material, and strives to maintain a similar level of idealism inherent in stamp design. In 1809 (2008) Herder plots major events of the year on a timeline, matching images appropriated from stamps with text and additional drawings to cre-

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ate an image reminiscent of a grade-school history textbook. Along the timeline Herder includes the dates of Edgar Allen Poe’s birth, the Louisiana Purchase, and the first abdominal operation in the United States.

Each entry references Abraham Lincoln in someway: the patient to receive the abdominal operation was Lincoln’s cousin, the first Louisiana Purchase explorer was killed by a shot to the head like Lincoln. Without mentioning it directly on the timeline, Herder created 1809 in honor of Lincoln, who was born on February 12, 1809.

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nissa Mack’s Failure is Impossible (2008) is a tribute to Susan B. Anthony and all who battled for womJ O N AT H A N H E R D E R 1809, 2008 en’s suffrage. The title references a well-known line from Anthony’s last public speech, made on her 86th birthday in 1906.

Anthony died six months later, not living to see The Nineteenth Amendment ratified in 1920. She was immortalized on a U.S. dollar coin in 1979, inspiring the then eight year-old Mack. The coin, however, was not well accepted by the broader public due to its physical similarities to the quarter, and after only two years the U.S. Mint was left with hundreds of millions of them in its vaults. Mack has proposed an alternate commemorative use for the coin as if to make up for the Treasury’s failure, using the child-

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hood best-friend necklace as a vehicle to forever honor Susan B. Anthony’s legacy and impart hope for future generations.

Mack has taken the dejected coin, divided it in two along a jagged line, and strung each half on a silver chain. The necklaces are useable sculptures, worn by two people to forever join them together in honor of social struggles in general and Susan B. Anthony’s in particular.

Displayed on a blue velvet background, Mack has reclaimed the unsuccessful coin for its original intention: to honor Susan B. Anthony because with such a worthy cause as hers, indeed failure was indeed impossible.

Other artists in A New Deal act as entrepreneurs by creating new philanthropic enterprises. These systems manipulate existing methods of exchange to spread social messages to society at large.

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avid Greg Harth uses U.S. paper currency as a platform to circulate printed statements to a wide audience through the existing exchange system. Beginning with I AM AMERICA in 1998, Harth creates limited-edition series of bills stamped with specific messages that underscore a global, national, or personal theme of the moment. Other messages include I AM STATE, I AM NOT CHURCH,

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ANISSA MACK Failure is Impossible, 2008

I AM ART, I AM OIL (illustration, page 3), and I AM VOTING. The bill I AM NOT TERRORIZED was released along with I AM NOT AFRAID just after September 11, 2001 and has become the largest edition note with over one million actual bills in circulation. Every December 1, Harth releases the combination notes I AM HIV+ and I AM HIV– in recognition of World AIDS Day. Harth’s stamped bank notes are circulated through the national exchange system as the artist trades them with other people and spends them like any other bill. He exchanges clean bills for stamped currency with friends and strangers, and often supplies them with ink pads and rubber stamps so that bills multiply across the country. He innovatively makes use of the commonly understood trade system to spread messages among large numbers of unsuspecting recipients.

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he Fundred Dollar Bill Project is also based in manipulating the ubiquitous system of currency exchange to achieve social awareness and potentially, social change. Artist and activist Mel Chin spearheaded this national project in 2006 to help rebuild New Orleans and make it safer for residents. New Orleans is one of the most lead-polluted cities in the U.S., a condition further aggravated by Hurricane Katrina. Lead is dangerous when immersed in the bloodstream, but a chemical solution exists that can neutralize the affect of lead exposure.

This ameliorative soluFUNDRED DOLLAR BILL PROJECT tion has been successPS 119 student Fundred Operative at work, 2008 fully implemented in inPhotograph by Hawley Hussey dustrial sites and is being refined for inhabited areas. This Fundred Dollar Bill Project seeks to raise the necessary funds through a national effort to support the aptly named Operation Paydirt solution.

Collectively, the Fundred Dollar Bill Project is a unique artwork comprised of millions of individual drawings by children across the United States.

Young artists create a Fundred Dollar Bill, cumulatively producing $300 million Fundred Dollars that will be taken to Congress in an armored truck powered on recycled vegetable oil from school cafeterias. Congress will be asked to match “dollar for dollar� in order to fund Operation Paydirt.

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PETER SIMENSKY Neutral Capital Collection II, 2007

BRIC Rotunda Gallery’s Education Program staff serves as Fundred Dollar Bill Project operatives. Students at BRIC Rotunda’s partner school PS 119, The Magnet School for Global and Ethical Studies in Midwood, are creating Fundreds; the school is also a safehouse for Fundreds created around Brooklyn, and will be one of the collection stops that the armored truck makes on its way to Washington D.C. in fall 2009.

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eter Simensky has also created his own form of currency that simultaneously critiques and engages the art market. Simensky creates his own paper currency, Neutral Capital, by collaging appropriated images from currencies of over fifty failing world economies.

Neutral Capital acquires value through exchange in the art market, which first occurred when the bank notes were traded for other artwork at the 2005 Armory Show in New York. Inspired by corporate art collections and his experience at the Armory Show, Simensky began to exchange Neutral

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Capital for other artists’ work to form the Neutral Capital Collection. A mobile gallery box displays the collection of artwork by international artists including Patty Chang, Ohad Meromi, and Allison Smith purchased with Neutral Capital.

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he web-based Fine Art Adoption Network (FAAN) has also established a unique barter system within the art market in which currency has no role and art appreciation equates to wealth. The New York alternative space Art in General commissioned artist Adam Simon to create FAAN in 2006, which has sponsored 384 successful adoptions. FAAN presents artwork online by artists across the world, displaying up to six works available for adoption. Once a viewer grows attached to an artwork, they contact the artist with a request for adoption that includes a filled-in questionnaire. Ultimately, the artist decides who receives the work, or if the work will be adopted at all. FAAN challenges the typical collection process with an alternate exchange method that makes traditionally requisite monetary wealth obsolete. It also provides artists with the opportunity to connect with their collectors on a personal level that is more difficult through the established dealer/ gallery system. FAAN is helping to create a larger, broader group of art collectors that truly appreciate art and the artist.

FINE ART ADOPTION NETWORK Fine Art Adoption Network (screenshot), 2006-ongoing

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EXHIBITION CHECKLIST All works courtesy of the artist unless otherwise noted.

F undred D ollar B ill P roject 2006-ongoing www.fundred.org

Fundred Dollar Bills by Class 5-305, PS 119, The Magnet School for Global and Ethical Studies, Midwood, Brooklyn Mixed-media on paper 2½ x 6 inches ea.

A nais D aly Tomb of The Great Emancipator, with quotes from different figureheads, 2008 Plaster and drywall 42 x 80 x 49 inches

D avid G reg H arth I AM SERIES, 1998-2007 Seventeen prints, ink on U.S. currency note 2½ x 6 inches ea.

J onathan H erder 1809, 2008 Stamp collage, and ink on paper 9 x 20 inches Courtesy of Pierogi, Brooklyn

Battling Postage Stamps, 1997 Stamp collage, watercolor, and dye on paper 11 x 41½ inches

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K essler

Couple, 2008 Pigment, paper pulp, U.S. currency, and magazine on handmade paper 20 x 16 inches Courtesy of Dieu Donné, New York

A nissa M ack Failure is Impossible, 2008 Susan B. Anthony dollar, silver chains, and velvet 9½ x 10½ inches ea.

Courtesy of the artist and Small A Projects, New York

P eter S imensky Neutral Capital Collection II, 2007 Portable art collection and gallery in collapsible shipping crate Includes works by Charlotte Beckett, Patty Chang, Jennifer Cohen, Rachel Foullon, James Hyde, Daniel Lefcourt, Michael Mahalchick, Ohad Meromi, Carter Mull, Adam Putnam, Allison Smith, Meredyth Sparks, The Invisible Glove (Center for Tactical Magic) Variable dimensions

Neutral Capital 500 (Conjurers), 2008 Collaged currencies 4½ x 7¾ inches ea.

Courtesy of Pierogi, Brooklyn

F ine A rt A doption N etwork

J esús J iménez

Fine Art Adoption Network, 2006-ongoing

$100,000 Dollars, 2006 Sent by Mexican workers from the U.S. to Michoacán, Mexico. Photographed after being exchanged for Mexican pesos in Caja Majapara, Morelia, Michoacán, México.

Poliptych, digital photographs 16 x 20 inches ea.

Web project www.fineartadoption.net Courtesy of Adam Simon and Art in General, New York

M ark W agner Buying the Brooklyn Bridge, 2008 Collage made of U.S. currency 30 x 20 inches Collection of Tim and Stephanie Ingrassia Courtesy Pavel Zoubok Gallery, New York

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BRIC Rotunda Gallery presents contemporary art, public events and an innovative arts education program. The Gallery’s aim is to increase the visibility and accessibility of contemporary art while bridging the gap between the art world and global culture in Brooklyn. BRIC Rotunda Gallery is the visual arts program of BRIC Arts | Media | Bklyn, a multi-disciplinary arts and media non-profit, dedicated to presenting visual, performing and media arts programs that are reflective of Brooklyn’s diverse communities and to supporting the creative process.

Director of Visual Arts Programs Elizabeth Ferrer Education Director Hawley Hussey Education Coordinator Angela Earley Gallery Manager Baseera Khan Development & Marketing Associate Johanna Taylor Executive Director, BRIC Arts | Media | Bklyn Leslie Schultz

33 Clinton St Brooklyn, NY 11201 briconline.org/rotunda

647 Fulton Street Brooklyn, NY 11217 briconline.org

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Support for the Gallery’s exhibition and public programs has been generously provided by The Lily Auchincloss Foundation, the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, and the Robert Lehman Foundation, in addition to numerous individuals.

The Gallery recognizes additional public support from The National Endowment for the Arts; the New York City Department of Youth and Community Development; New York City Council members Lewis Fidler, Vincent Gentile, and Al Vann; Assemblymember Joan Millman; State Senator Martin Connor; and the Brooklyn delegations of the New York State Assembly and Senate.

This publication was made possible thanks to a generous grant from the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation.

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