Since the skyrocketing of art world sales figures (and egos) in the 1980s, art has come to be associated more and more with money. Lately, money has also come to be discussed in the same breath as art. When the new $20 bill was recently released, art critics around the country (including here at The Times) weighed in on the aesthetics of its revamped design.
At the Sherry Frumkin Gallery, "On the Money: At the Intersection of Art and Commerce" is an amusing, provocative show that further blurs the boundaries among cash, commodity and culture. All seven artists in the show use money as their medium, as a raw material fully loaded with a political, social and emotional charge.
The implicit significance of the bills and coins makes every gesture of effacement and alteration necessarily double as an act of deconstruction. After all, a dollar bill is the perfect embodiment of the Post-structuralist critique--a ubiquitous multiple lacking both an original and an author. But, refreshingly, in this selection, matter ultimately wins out over mind, and impressive formal acrobatics overshadow theory-bending.
Oriane Stender weaves tiny, exquisite tapestries of shredded bills, finishing some of them off with thread, like small quilts. Ray Beldner, too, engages in some fancy cut-and-fold work. He fashions a lampshade out of a handful of dollars, sews others into a full-scale American flag and--at the other end of the spectrum of respect--turns yet more bills into a common doily.
Several of the artists extract found poetry from the words printed on the bills, Beldner by cleverly cutting away the extraneous letters, distilling "Federal Reserve Note," for instance, into "Fear Not." Robin Clark selectively scrapes the ink off the surface of the paper, leaving fragments (an ear, the scales of justice) floating on the desolate, ghostly sheet. Lisa Kokin partially covers lines of text in old sales and management training manuals with skinny strips of money (the object, after all), in some of the most delightfully subversive contributions to the show.
The Art Guys, a Houston-based pair, have scattered pennies, stamped with their name, across the gallery floor, adding to the atmosphere of festive irreverence. And what would a show about art and money be without the participation of J.S.G. Boggs, the artist infamous for using his hand-rendered money in place of actual currency? One of the bills he shows here recasts money itself as a vehicle for fantasy, and not just the means of fulfilling it. On his redesigned $1 bill, the formally enshrined male autocrat is gone. In his place, Boggs gives us the "First Female President," casually dressed, signing a document and smiling.
* Sherry Frumkin Gallery, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 453-1850, through Jan. 9. Closed Sundays and Mondays.
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Pulling Strings: Simply rounding the corner into Patricia Faure Gallery's project room is an exhilarating experience. To come upon Jacob Hashimoto's installation for the first time is to be offered the sudden, glorious gift of buoyancy.
Hashimoto, a young, L.A.-based artist who recently graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, has created a canopy of sorts, comprising roughly 3,000 small kites. The untitled installation--a variant of the artist's "An Infinite Expanse of Sky," now at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art--brings to mind the repetitive, process-driven work of Ann Hamilton but with lighter intent.
Fashioned simply out of bamboo rods, string, and offset prints of sky and clouds on vellum, the rectangular kites hang from the ceiling in densely aligned rows that cascade, nearly to the floor, in a staggered diagonal. When you enter the gallery, the kites are at their highest point, about 20 feet overhead, and the sensation is breathtaking. Calligraphic shadows shimmer on the side walls; as you walk the perimeter, the kites sway in gentle, undulating waves.
At the far side of the gallery, with the kites hovering just above the floor, the view shifts radically, calling to mind--literally and metaphorically--the inside of a piano: all those strings required to create music, pure and simple.
Art felt directly through the body is not unheard of these days, but more often it induces visceral repulsion (think Damien Hirst, et al.) than a transcendent shock of weightlessness. Hashimoto's vision is simple, elegant, beautiful--and necessary.
* Patricia Faure Gallery, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 449-1479, through Jan. 16. Closed Sundays and Mondays.
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