C2 – Uncut Money Art
Uncut sheets of Money- Art
The pieces being exhibited are unified in theme and in physical properties. Cayman developed a special installation for his exhibit in Asia: a sphere filled with one hundred million Indian Rupees, destroyed inside the Reserve Bank of India.
Le Dictateur is a sculpture of a man, built entirely by blown Murano glass, whose expression suggests a man driven by a crazed obsession with money and power, his hands stained with the blood of those he felt that he had to destroy. The sculpture is 40 cm tall.
Money Talks also features an evolution of the famous artist Antonio Berni’s “La Ramona, the french ballerina”. Like Berni, Cayman used an embossing plate (using a 3D printing technique) to create the image of Ramona, a fictional character that often appeared in Berni’s works. She was one of Berni’s most famous muses, and serves as inspiration to Echegaray Guevara as well. “To me, Ramona represents the seduction of the material world, luxury and splendor, and the money behind the sex industry that promises a ‘better life.’”
Similarly, the dollar represents ambitions for which so many of us are willing to sacrifice everything. Cayman will also be presenting Good Luck, a piece in which the title is airbrushed on top of a in a light, friendly font that is reminiscent of advertisements aimed at convincing viewers that you, too, can access the American Dream.
LA RAMONA , THE DANCER
Cayman created the piece La Ramona en Medias 2.0 using the same embossing technique as that of famous artist Antonio Berni, who produced much of his work in France. To do so, Cayman developed metal molds using 3D-printing technology to reproduce the print and make the embossing over the sheets of dollar bills. The technique took months to develop, and it is the first time that it has been implemented in this type of embossing using Berni’s work as a model.
Berni began to develop the character of Ramona Montiel while he lived and worked in Paris starting in 1962. Ramona is a young neighborhood girl who lives in the heart of her city. Overwhelmed by her work as a seamstress and seduced by the appeal of luxury as well as false promises of a “better life,” she becomes a cabaret dancer.
For this series, the artist searched flea markets of Paris looking for materials to compose this new character: old sequined dresses, pieces of lace, rope, braids, and other accessories typically used by women from the Belle Époque. Although pho- tographs of brothels in Rosario, Argentina in the 40s appear in Berni’s work, as well as a figure that looks very much like Ramona in the end of the 50s (in the piece La Boda, or The Wedding), Ramona is a product of the artist’s conceptualiza- tion of Paris, growing out of the French cabaret tradition as well one principal figure: the chorus girl.
Through Ramona, the artist explores different aspects of social and historical pressures on women, such as the influence of television and advertising, the configuration of social feminine sensibility and material desires. The artist represents her through her powerful circle of influential friends from all sectors of society: a general, a sailor, a criminal, an ambassador and a bishop, among others, as a star in the café concert circle and in his trips to Spain.
