Whitespace Gallery Bangkok proudly platforms its first regional group show, Currency Crisis, curated by Tang Fu Kuen, a collection of existing artistic practices in the region on the shared topic of money.

Currency Crisis- screams at us everyday in the media. A term that apparently signals global panic and paranoia. Economic blocs collapse and governments shut down. Hard times are here to stay. Or so it seems.

Art, as usual, gives us the solution. Fret not, folks, step into the art world. Here is where money naturally becomes fiction! It is, after all, made up of nothing more than printed paper and metal chips…

Money matters, yes. But what is its real value? What can be exchanged? In fact, what is the matter of money? And what can we make (out) of its materiaility?

In the witty hands of 6 artists from Thailand, Singapore and Myanmar, the ‘currency crisis’ can only get deeper, more eerie and funny too.

Money - as both image and object - is re-imagined and transformed. Each artist questions the layers of meanings that money stands for and, through radical action, alters its representations.

Lattahapon Korkiatarkul (Thailand) meticulously sandpapers each bank note into a blank sheet, presenting its fine powder debris as worthy remains.

Pisitakun Kuntalang (Thailand) offers for sale his artistic sketches of dollar bills in exchange for their same value in real cash.

Pornprasaert Yamazaki (Thailand) slips a bank note between 2 glass jars, each holding a fighting fish. Using his own blood, he re-draws the note on a canvas - pictorially distorted - as if seen from the viewpoint of each fish.

Sai Huan Kuan (Singapore) literally splits a coin into half, as a gesture of historical memory linking Thailand and Singapore.

For Green Zeng (Singapore) and Moe Satt (Myanmar), unspoken stories lie behind the ‘national’ symbols on the surface of currency, now to be told and re-invented.

-Whitespace Gallery

Image: ©