Currency Collages by artist Joey Colombo

” Money is all about control; who has it, who wants it, how to get it and keep it. The power of my art lies in the act of cutting up the very device of control and in that process transferring that power and making it my own. By taking an object we hold treasurable and transforming it into an object of art, I am both reducing its inherent and practical purposes, and empowering a secondary significance and value. Each bill, like each living person alive or dead, is wholly unique. The bills come from vastly different locations, cultures, ideologies, and time periods – each possessing unique energies and stories. As I cut them up I release and re imagine them through my own vision into objects that have never existed. Each bill and the pieces they assemble into take on a new and transferable value. They become a new currency, and one whose story has just begun to unfold. ” – Joey Colombo