"Series’ concept
Ukiyo-e styled money bill collage - It is contemporary art that uses money/ traditional paper bills from around the world for the collage materials and adds traditional decoration styles to it by using gold and silver foils. It expresses the themes such as civilization, nation, history and capitalist society with the motif of Ukiyo-e style.
This neo-pop art adds decorativeness to Ukiyo-e, a Japanese traditional pop art, with the techniques of Conceptual art and Japanese traditional crafts. It also features satire which captures the current affairs of the international economy. It symbolizes the era when cash disappears and digital money takes over.
It is a conceptual painting in which the symbolism of the quoted Ukiyo-e paintings and its position of art history meets the critical satire on civilization theory and the reality of modern capitalism. The bill number is included in the title of the work and its originality is “guaranteed by the state” because they guarantee that the same bill number cannot exist. By quoting the concept of Ukiyo-e, in which the same composition is used to create different colours of the printed version, each work is a unique piece because of the money bills and colours even though the composition is common. The screen collage of money bills uses the method of Automatic Painting, which can never make the same pattern.
Descriptions
Quoted print, """The Great Wave off Kanagawa""", is one of 46 views of Katsushika Hokusai's Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. One of the most famous Japanese artworks known in the world. The influence Japonism had on Western art history such as Impressionism is significant. Even in contemporary art, it has an unmeasurable influence to this day. To name a few, Julian Opie has published a work influenced by Ukiyo-e.
It is regarded as a masterpiece of the iconic image of Hokusai/ Japanese people’s religiousness towards nature. On contrary to the Edo period, modern Japanese religion is the money. Thus this conceptual artwork implies the changes in Japanese religious idols and the current trend of the shift from actual money to digital ones. The economy is like an ever-evolving creature that sometimes plays with humans and sometimes energizes them, it depicts the modern world that we live in."
