Monday 30 July 2012

The Aquiles Coins come to London

Money given back is rare! If, in the first place, Aquiles had removed coins from the street and moved them into the limited space of galleries, in a second movement, he gives them back to public space transformed and with a new meaning. The spanish/swiss artist considers the restitution of the money he had taken from his first usage to make it an aesthetic and subversive object. It is a logical follow up of his first reasoning. If he gives back the coins, so delicately transformed by him, he doesn't simply put them back into circulation: he offers them to the public by fixing them into places of high symbolic value, so that everyone can see them for a long period of time and with the same amusement as with the first transformation.


Nevertheless, if Aquiles plans to get back at some institutions like the Palais Fédéral in Bern or Buckingham Palace, he decided to do it without their consent. Imposing the coin he chose in function of the place. He is exposing himself to sanctions because he did not consult the authorities. He will have to incrust the coins discretely and be perfectly organised not to get caught. This is how in these inverted hold-ups, the plastician becomes a performer as well.  The risk taken by Aquiles gives more value to the coin of money, a value that is strictly artistic which hasn't been taken into account by the economists. He is not the author of the transformed coin in Sweden insulting the king of Sweden.



















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