Examining cash at no cost
Hoehn Family Gallery introduces “Art Cash: Money in Print” for the spring semester
Nicole Kuhn | Arts & Culture | USD Vista
“Art Cash: Money in Print,” the most recent art exhibit in the Hoehn Family Gallery in Founders Hall, showcases how money can be made into art. It first opened back in February and will be available to the public until May 18.
Katherine Noland, operations coordinator, said the reason the gallery chose this particular exhibit is because it resonates with the USD community not just in art history but also in economics, political studies, literature, and ethnic studies.
Students are finding time in between classes to wander through the exhibit. Junior Cara Treu admired the layout and theme of the exhibit.
“The entire exhibit was well-curated,” Treu said. “I was particularly drawn to the ‘Pyramid Scheme’ piece, which alluded to how fraudulent investment plans are disguised into our pop culture. The video was also an important piece because it showed how effective art can be used to share a powerful message. I chose to go to the exhibit because I am learning the printing techniques the artists used in my printmaking course.”
Erin Sullivan Maynes, the art’s curator, stated in the catalog that the art is divided into different categories.
“The exhibition is divided into four categories, which organize the ways that artworks have responded to, appropriated, or exploited the functional character of paper money,” Maynes said. “These categories are value, exchange, circulation, and the counterfeit.”
The artists range from Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, John Baldessari, and Chuck Close. The exhibit first opens up with an enlarged archival pigment print of a real $100,000 bill, before wire transfers, by local artist John Baldessari from National City. Some artists tried to use their artwork of cash in the real world, such as Edward Kieholz, who printed his own currency to use as sort of a social experiment.
Senior Katelyn Allen, who works at the gallery, explained that she was excited to see some of Warhol’s work at the exhibit.
“The show explores art’s relationship to money and, more specifically, to the concepts of value, circulation and exchange, and counterfeiting,” Allen said. “These are the central themes of the show. Beyond that, one can find many artists in the show exploring currency’s relationship to objecthood and to symbolic meaning. Andy Warhol, for example, saw money as having a sort of iconic status in signifying wealth, power, & privilege. Overall it’s a really engaging and thought-provoking exhibit and I’d encourage everyone to come and take a look.”
Noland explained that throughout the exhibit contemporary artists use their voice through their art as a political statement against their local economies.
“Art Cash: Money in Print” examines the way in which contemporary artists have been ‘making money’ by creating artwork related to currency,” Noland said. “Artworks in the exhibition mimic currency design, question what makes value, or create their own bills to circulate as alternative currency in local economies.”
Noland talked about artist Andy Warhol who is featured in the exhibit. The work produced by Warhol in the exhibit was for ARTCASH, an artist-designed currency called “Art Cash benefit for Television Programming” back in 1971.
“Andy Warhol is a Pop artist who regularly used his art practice to reflect on — and use to his advantagethe art market,” Noland said. “In this exhibition, we feature prints by Warhol that appropriate images from advertisements and sales, in addition to his own ‘Art Cash’ bill that he designed and created.”
Noland explained ARTCASH was a gambling night fundraiser for the artists’ collective Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T).
Noland said that the curator, Sullivan Maynes, explained the details of the artwork.
“The black and green boxes on Warhol’s ARTCASH Ones gesture to the counterfeiting proscription in their almost complete rejection of the visual,” Sullivan Maynes said. “He (the artist) employed only two elements: stamped text and a solid rectangle that printed in green on the front and black on the back of the bill.”
Tiago Gualberto, a young contemporary artist from Brazil, redesigned his own country’s Brazilian currency. Noland explained that his inspiration for a lot of his art was from his childhood.
“This exhibition includes a work from USD’s collection in which he recreated a bill from Brazil’s old currency, the cruzeiro, that featured the portrait of an indigenous person on its front,” Noland said. “Gualberto was fascinated by this bill in his childhood, and now understands that it was because he was deeply upset by the portrayal of this indigenous person as an anonymous face, in contrast to the Brazilian political figures represented on other notes who were always identified.”
Across the hall is one of the most important pieces of the exhibit: “Art Rebate,” an art installation by three local San Diego artists. The room presents a living room-esque vibe with a vibrant yellow floral couch, coffee table, and television showing news clippings from the early 2000s.
The installation in the Hoehn galleries was created by the artists Louis Hock, Liz Sisco, and David Avalos to document the work they did during this time.
Noland explained that “Arte Reembolso/Art Rebate” (1993) is a performance created by the three San Diego artists in the 1990s, when immigration debate was a controversial issue in California, much how it is now in the larger United States.
“The artists used money from a federal grant given by the NEA to distribute $10 bills to undocumented workers in San Diego County,” Noland said. “The idea was to provide a ‘rebate’ to these workers who were paying taxes without receiving federal benefits. The artists also marked the bills with their signatures, and hoped that as the workers spent the cash, locals would notice as the notes physically circulated within San Diego, and therefore recognize the positive economic contributions that this population was making.”
Toreros can see the art until May 18, as well as some other exhibits including the “Women Who Impress” and “Between the Future and the Past” (Cuban Photography). Students can also join an art walk through the gallery with Professor Shannon Starkey, assistant professor of Architecture + Art History, May 10 at 5 p.m. at the Hoehn Family Gallery.