EXCHANGE RATE: ARTISTS WHO INCORPORATE MONEY

Exchange Rate features artists who incorporate currency in their work as material and subject matter. Playing on the location of GAC’s home in the 1878 First National Bank Building and The Strand’s history as the “Wall Street of the South,” the artists in the exhibition address commercial systems of trade, value, and labor represented in paper, metal, plastic, and digital media. Addressing personal relationships to currency and the exchange of goods, services, and the accumulation of wealth, worth, and, value, this exhibition aims to give insights into the work of artists connected to the region who each take individual approaches to address this medium of exchange in their work.

Kevin Curry

Kevin Curry received his BFA in Graphic Design from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Michigan, and after working as an Art Director in New York and Philadelphia, started his own design & Illustration business before receiving his MFA in Sculpture from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois in 2008. Curry has completed multiple artist residencies, including residencies at Grand Canyon National Park; Redline, Denver, CO; Platteforum, Denver; Art342, Ft. Collins, CO; and Lawndale Arts Center, Houston, TX. His work has been included in group and solo exhibitions throughout the US, as well as public art commissions for the city of Denver. Curry has held teaching positions at the University of Denver, Regis University, and Baylor University. He is currently a professor at Florida State University.

Mary Jeys

Mary Jeys is a multi-media artist and activist. She has worked to promote social change in non-fiction media settings including a non-profit documentary production company, Aubin Pictures, Inc.; Hunter College’s Integrated Media Arts MFA program; and the School of Visual Arts with CUNY Graduate Center that respectively sponsored and hosted Where the Truth Lies, a conference on propaganda. She has participated in creative research opportunities including The Laundromat Project’s Create Change Professional Development Fellowship and LMCC’s Swing Space in New York. She has received grants from FEAST in Brooklyn and Macktez. As a guest speaker, she has been invited to talk at Parsons The New School for Design’s MFA program in Transdisciplinary Design and The Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program’s Fix It Yourself Lectures. She received her BFA from the University of Texas at Austin.

Jeys’ notable projects include founding a local currency for north Brooklyn, NY called The Brooklyn Torch. A local currency is a method of trading goods and services meant to supplement other means of trade while improving the community wealth. Local currencies circulate in a defined region. Money does not leave the area because trade is restricted by the currency boundaries.

The Art Guys

The Art Guys (Michael Galbreth, b. 1956, Philadelphia, and Jack Massing, b. 1959, Buffalo) began working together in 1983 after meeting while students at the University of Houston and continued a collaboration that spanned more than thirty years.

The Art Guys’ work has been included in more than 150 exhibitions in museums, galleries and public spaces throughout the United States and in other parts of the world including Europe and China. Their work has been seen in more than 40 solo exhibitions among which include the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Tacoma Art Museum, the de Saisset Museum, the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art and the Tampa Museum of Art. The Art Guys realized major public art projects including Intercontinental Airport Houston, Phoenix Airport and the University of Houston as well as civic and private commissions. Additionally, The Art Guys lectured at more than 60 universities, museums and other institutions throughout the United States including Harvard, Chicago Art Institute, School of Visual Arts New York, Kansas City Art Institute, UCLA, Vanderbilt and many more.

Articles, reviews and stories about their work have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, Art In America, ArtNews, Artforum, Sculpture Magazine, CNN, CBS News Sunday Morning and many more. The Art Guys have been included in many books and catalogs including The Art Guys: Think Twice and SUITS: The Clothes Make the Man, published by Harry N. Abrams, New York; and the DVD The Art Guys: Home On The Range, a compilation of 25 years of video works published by Microcinema International.

To read the complete article, see:
Exchange Rate (https://www.galvestonartscenter.org/exhibitions/exchangerate/)

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