MUNTADAS, Antoni (b. Barcelona 1942)
ON TRANSLATION: THE BANK
Created and exhibited 1997
Lamda Cibachrome Edition created in 2002
No 3 from an Edition of Nine
34 ¼ x 25 ½ in. / 87. X 64.77 cm.
Signed and numbered by the artist
The theme of translation is extended to the exchange of national currencies in this image/collage originally conceived for a group exhibition in the shuttered office of a Canal Street Bank Office in New York City organized by the Manhattan Art Projects.
Exhibitions
- The Bank: Inside the Counting House, Manhattan Art Projects, New York 1997
- Fundacion Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, Venezuela 25 August to 3 November, 2002 9/9
- Muntadas: On Translation Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona c. 2002 (Catalogue) ill. 8/9
- Muntadas: On Translation: Il Guardini Venice Biennale 2005
- Muntadas. Wurtembergischer Museum, Stuttgart, 2006
- Entre/Between, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofîa, Madrid. 2011 Curated by Daina Augaitis (cat.)
In the cibachrome image entitled On Translation: The Bank (1997-2002), a rare collectible in this artist’s oeuvre, Muntadas evokes an economic aspect of translation. He suggests that as a one thousand dollar bill (like the one at the top of his image) gets exchanged for – read translated into – its counterpart in another currency and the process continues through many “translations,” (illustrated by the logos of different nations) the value of the bill can eventually shrink to zero. The vagaries of the exchange rate, here illustrated by a currency chart like those found in exchange bureaux can cause this to happen as a widely traded currency is exchanged for an obscure one. Hence the words in big letters at the center of the image: “How long will it take for a $1000 to disappear through a series of foreign exchanges?”
Although it is tempting to read Translation: The Bank as anti-capitalist, and to call Muntadas’ overall oeuvre a form of social critique, Muntadas claims a more poetic disengaged stance: “My work is not so much a critique. My work is a contribution to the questioning of contemporary phenomena through a process and production of work. I am basically curious and I use my work to understand and to know more. It is by perceiving things afresh that I can expose situations that the locals themselves sometimes do not see. “
Cone, Michele. The Brooklyn Rail, November 5, 2014. Illus. in color.
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