How is money more than mere container and conveyor of value? What happens to money we destroy, alter, or simply stop using? How do the materials and the making of money matter? Artists and craftspeople are highly attuned to these questions of money, aesthetics, and exchange. Political cartoonists offer direct commentary on the dramas of money; conceptual artists play with money’s materials and meanings through theory and technique; non-Western valuables make apparent the close connection between the making of objects and the making of value. This exhibition includes installations made of out-of-circulation Mexican bills by Argentine artist Máximo González, the art of trompe l’oeil painter G.B. Tate and others, as well as a variety of money and non-Western valuables. Figuring Exchange presents this assemblage of objects to explore the diverse perspectives they offer on questions of materiality, value, and exchange, and to reflect on money’s making, meanings, and artful transformation.

"Figuring Exchange: Art and Money"
featuring the work of Argentine artist Máximo González

October 14, 2013
6:00-8:00 p.m.
Contemporary Arts Center Outreach Gallery, Room 3100A

To RSVP, please go to: http://imtfi-figuring-exchange.eventbrite.com/. This exhibit is presented by the Claire Trevor School of the Arts and the Institute for Money, Technology & Financial Inclusion in the School of Social Sciences at UC Irvine. For further information, please contact Jenny Fan, 949-824-2284 or imtfi@uci.edu.