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Josh
Greene subverts the system by charging 65 cents for One
Dollar.
Lawrence
Weschler, author of Boggs:
A Comedy of Values, will give a free reading at Twenty-third
Avenue Books (1015 NW 23rd Ave., 224-5097) at 3:30 pm Saturday,
May 15.
J.S.G.
Boggs will give a performance piece at the
exhibition space 7 pm, Saturday, May 15. The $10
admission includes the exhibition.
Boggs
plans to try to spend his replicas of U.S. currency in Portland
over the course of the month. One depicts a $1,000 bill.
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Seeing
Money:
A Unique Art Event of Uncommon Currency
403 NW 5th Ave., 248-9014
Ends June 6
$3-$5
"Money makes the world go round" should be the theme song
of Seeing Money. Music, however, is the one of the
few art forms that this ambitious event doesn't encompass:
There are theatrical readings, performances, a book signing,
a Monopoly championship competition and, most importantly,
an exhibition of more than 300 works of art that use currency
as a medium or material wealth as an underlying concept.
The show's organizer, Helen Gundlach, is a former fund
raiser and marketing professional who has a background in
theater. She says her impetus in initiating this project
was to "reclaim her creativity." A couple of years ago,
after a lifetime of frequenting art galleries, Gundlach
purchased M.K. Guth's wall sculpture Wedding Dress in
a Window, which currently hangs at the entrance to the
Seeing Money exhibition. Why, Gundlach wondered,
had it taken her so long to make this kind of commitment?
Because, she realized, she had been attached to money and
unwilling to use it to support cultural pursuits; she was
a victim of the social construct that money is more precious
than art. Thus the underlying idea for Seeing Money
was born.
Gundlach intends for this exhibition to be interactive.
She purchased 30 used doors and installed them throughout
the space: Some of them can be opened, their thresholds
traversed; others hold artwork. She says her intention was
to "give value to things with age, to mingle art with non-art
and to create an unintimidating viewing environment." The
result, however, is a confusing maze.
This unconventional exhibition design is distracting, with
its unfortunate dark walls and carpet, but several of the
works are humorous and priceless--in conceptual, rather
than monetary, terms. On the floor is Bill Will's 78
loaves of bread and 7,800 pennies. Stale slices of inexpensive
sandwich bread lie end to end in rows, like icons of this
vernacular term for money. Next to them is a spread of shiny
pennies. Both are "valued" at $78, but the bread is edible
and thus more able than its accompanying pile of copper
to satisfy immediate human needs.
Barbara Yoshida offers a limited-edition print of a $3
bill. The front is adorned with an image of the Three Graces;
the reverse shows an elegant woman with a child at each
breast. Here the female provides sustenance, but she must
take the form of money to attain social worth. Ray Beldner's
Yin Yang blanket is one of the more aesthetically
successful pieces in the exhibition. The artist stitched
Korean currency and U.S. currency into the design of the
circular yin-yang symbol. East and West, commerce and culture,
are simultaneously opposing and complementary. There are
also a couple of paintings by J.S.G. Boggs, the exhibition's
headlining artist, who is internationally known for drawing
replicas of currency and persuading merchants to accept
them as cash.
Seeing Money is Gundlach's first attempt at mounting
an art exhibition, and she personally financed a great portion
of it. There is a $5 admission charge, which functions like
a user fee: Visitors bear some of the costs of the exhibition
and are thus supposedly prompted to assess their relationships
with money and how it impacts their lives and decisions.
"If you're unwilling to pay, your commitment to art is tenuous,"
Gundlach says. But the people whose commitment to art is
tenuous are the very ones whom Seeing Money might
persuade to place a higher value on visual art. The admission
charge excludes those who are unable to pay, defeating Gundlach's
intention "to get art off of the pedestal and into our lives."
The exhibition site is in the Old Town neighborhood, the
dwelling place of many of the city's homeless. During the
preview opening, several faces were pressed against the
window, peering in, reminding viewers that it's still money,
not art, that makes the world go round.
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Willamette Week | originally
published April 28,
1999
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