Cesare Pietroiusti’s (CRF 1996) solo exhibition Valori is up at The Gallery Apart in Rome until July 29th, 2022.
“This story begins towards the end of the Seventies when anonymous authors undertook to enrich the 1,000 Italian lira banknotes with drawings, messages, signatures and scribbles. I do not know whether it was an aftermath of inflation and therefore of the decline in the currency’s purchasing power, or a consequence of ‘participatory’ ideology, very popular at the time, or of a general debunking of the state authority and its symbols… I committed to collecting those scribbled banknotes, which, from 1987, I began to show in my exhibitions in the form of photo enlargements. I have always been aware of my inability to ‘create’ interesting images, so I engaged to collect and, sometimes, to exhibit, things that were made by others, often involuntarily. Only afterwards I understood that the issue was not only the valorization of the anonymous creativity, so widespread yet not acknowledged, but, more significantly, the meeting between the real and the symbolic on those banal pieces of paper: between a felt-tip pen mark and purchasing power; between a fragment of cellulose (and glue, and ink) and a number; between the epithelial residues from dozens of fingers, possibly dirty and sweaty, and finance. Valori features works on banknotes, stamps from the Eighties, and on themes such as exchange and gift, along with unprecedented works created in the last few months, of which one has been purposedly designed for this exhibition.” Learn more here.