White hare carved from a piece of wood found on the streets of Barcelona.

Flying Philosopher’s Stone, poised to drop on viewer’s head. Stone is held aloft by the images of 56 philosophers.

The money-winged cages (Icarus $ and Icarus €) enjoyed a brief stint in a window display in an upscale Barcelona boutique* before I was asked to take them down. The idea of money flying away, carrying with it nothing but a cage, was too much. “Too heavy”.

Brief as it was, I got some reward by seeing how these flying money prisons caused mild confusion in the people who walked by, leading a few to stop and gaze a bit longer.

*see: http://wp.me/p3yscW-43

A title at times is unnecessary and even detrimental in that it can limit or distort what you see in something. Taking this into consideration, you can take or leave the title of “Icarus” I’ve given my money-winged cages.

The title comes from an urge to counterweight an initial and entirely valid reading of these objects along the lines of “money gives us wings/freedom”, “it can even make a cage fly”. Money can of course give us wings (just look at all those expensive metal bugs zipping across our skies). As it can also imprison us in a cage of its/our own design. The title is meant to question what the limits are to a wise use of money. The work itself, meanwhile, hopefully points to the sometimes (often? always?) contradictory relationship between money and freedom.

Stretching an interpretation of the title further, you might also find in these money-winged Icarus’ a disturbingly direct relation to the original Icarus of the myth: the reckless high-flying of our money-powered consumer society has indeed brought us too close to the sun as manifested by the global warming caused by industrial production. But maybe such an interpretation is itself too high-flying.

A big title for a small show: in your face hype to get you to come have lunch at an excellent vegetarian restaurant in Poblenou, Barcelona (the Aguaribay, c/Ramón Turró 181). Money and trash. Money as the ghost (or, in its paper form, the sheet of the ghost), the spirit, the impulse. Trash as the dead body, the material manifestation of specific, marketplace value after that material has been stripped of value. The show consists of watercolors and drawings and objects made from recycled or devalued (revalued?) materials.

The banknotes, drawn with ink or with watercolor, mock monetary value by representing outrageous sums, some microscopic, others astronomic. What could you buy with $0.0000000015? A microbe? Or $50,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000? A solar system? Or…?

Some banknotes are realized on discarded paper or product packaging material with the aim of short-circuiting the positive and negative values we give to money and trash. One of these “trash” banknotes is realized on a sales receipt (for groceries), the amount of the note equaling the amount of the purchase, 23.23€.

Along with these banknotes, I’ve shown some watercolors of animals in groups or with half-human/half-animal figures, or with other figures that appear to be humans in animal suits, the line blurred between what is animal and what is human. Why show these with the banknotes? Perhaps because they too reflect on the question of value, on our place in the world with other creatures, on our commerce with other beings, on what we exchange or not with them. Animals are part of the immense underside of value (along with the general rape of the natural world and the exploitation of the labor of fellow humans) that feeds the marketplace. That’s one possible reason why I’m showing the watercolors of animals alongside the drawings/watercolors of banknotes. There isn’t, however, really a clear connection. I just felt like showing them.

Enjoy your lunch.