Marco Cassani - C

Honold Fine Art is pleased to present C, the fourth pop up show of HFA in Ubud, Bali and the first solo exhibition of Italian born Bali based artist Marco Cassani on view from 8–22 February 2018 at the beautiful back wing of Tonyraka Art Gallery in Bali.

The title of the exhibition ‘C’ refers to the third letter in the Latin alphabet and introduces abbecedario, (Alphabet Book), a projected monograph, which will analyze Cassani’s artistic practice.

Besides Cassani, ‘C’ stands for column, currency, coin and credibility, four words tightly connected by the concept of the creation of value, a red thread in the practice of Cassani, as demonstrate the projects Indisciplinato (Undisciplined) and The Alphabet of Money (Huruf Uang).

The exhibition presents an installation comprised of more than six thousand foreign and Indonesian coins, stacked on top of each other to form five individual columns. Each column differs from the others in physical aspects like height, weight and texture as well as the symbolic and economic value they represent.

Two individual columns forming the work Inseparable Two (Loro Blonyo) 2015–2016, refer to the wages of workers, whom the artist encountered in Yogyakarta. They consist of 1000 Indonesian Rp. 100 coins, with an economic value of Rp. 100.000 and of 1450 Indonesian Rp. 1.000 coins, with an economic value of Rp. 1.450.000 representing the daily and monthly wage for a Javanese married couple of workers in Java, Indonesia respectively.

Fountain ‘Gunung Kawi’ (2017), Fountain ‘Monkey Forest’ (2017) and Fountain ‘Negari’ (2018) all have a different origin. For two years the artist explored three fountains located in Balinese temples and in a Balinese coffee plantation, collecting the coins that tourists and locals had thrown into the water, while making a wish. Their economic values are unknown because many of the coins have corroded over time rendering the getting to know their provenance and actual value impossible.

In the course of creating a visual epitome for the accumulation of money, the artist is actually destroying the coins’ initial monetary value. As an artwork, however, the object will be valued according to a new system of reference; that of contemporary art. Marco Cassani’s work reflects on our economic system; in particular on the precarious state of inter human agreement and the subtle distinction between trading and economy (the creation of value), which is the very base of cultural production.

The exhibition is hosted by Tonyraka Art Gallery, one of the most established galleries in Bali and will be open everyday from 9 AM to 5 PM. For further information please contact info@honoldfineart.com.