Paper Money
Series, 2015–2020
In Paper Money the support is the banknote itself. Uncut Federal Reserve sheets — just as they leave the press, before they become money — and antique pesetas from the Bank of Spain become the surface on which the artist draws, paints and prints.
Over that grid of official portraits, others appear: twenty heads of state accused of corruption in Le Presidents, Lula and Dilma in Petrolago Brasil, a dancer, a bullfighter. In Good Luck, a single phrase in the friendly typeface of advertising is enough to make the bill speak of the American dream. The work rests on an idea the artist sums up this way: paper money is an optical illusion.
