change, 2016, Oil paint on casted gold, Dimensions variable.

In this work, I cast pennies in 18k gold and concealed their material value by hand-painting them to resemble ordinary copper coins. The three coins were then spent as legal tender at separate locations across New York City, quietly entering the anonymous circuitry of everyday commerce. This intervention stages a disjunction between material wealth and economic recognition. Although materially transformed, the coins retain exchange value only insofar as they remain legible within the symbolic conventions of currency. Their gold content becomes functionally irrelevant the moment they pass unnoticed through an ordinary retail transaction, absorbed seamlessly into the everyday flow of exchange. Rather than revealing hidden value, the work examines how systems of exchange flatten material difference in order to preserve the smooth fiction of value itself. By allowing materially precious objects to circulate invisibly as ordinary change, the project exposes the fragile collective agreements through which value is recognized, stabilized, and continuously reproduced.