A Study of a Yellow Money Box No. 1 Print

Gold have always been a measurement of wealth and most currencies were based on it. Why? Because it’s shiny? There are a lot of shiny metals, so why gold? I like gold because of its honey-like reflected light and warm shadows. Gold is associated with wealth and therefore a number of golden metal pastiches exists from golden dildos to shoes to bras, etc. For centuries painters have had to interpret gold with earth pigments and yellow. If done correctly it becomes a trompe d’oeil, if not it becomes a pastiche. Gold can be seen a a totem of suffering and not just as a shiny and pretty standard of measurement. In the late 18th century french guilders died as a side effect of long exposure to the quick silver ingredient in the guilding process. And today a lot of gold miners die in mine accidents and often work under horrible conditions. Gold is a deadly commodity and goldsmith Kim Buck (DK, 1957) made inflatable golden jewelry to highlight the working conditions of miners. My works do not contain gold - they are “golden”. And when one sees a golden metal one is never sure it is genuine. The danish word for gold is “guld” - similar to the germanic “gold” and the danish word for yellow is “gul”. The d in the end of “guld” has an almost silent, round sound (stød in phonetics), so the two words have a phonetic resemblance - so it has become common to refer as fake gold jewelry as being yellow - as a play on those two words. My intention is to highlight our consumerism, as most of these products are available to buy; most of the objects are the epitome of kitsch as most know they are not real gold. It is a story of an object - decorative, usable or both - listed on sale on the internet and resourced by the help of Google’s search engine. I have interpreted these objects without them being physically present in front of me. It can be viewed as a 21st century tribute to Magritte (1898-1967); “This is not a gold tea cup”. I want the spectator to make a visual sensation of these paintings that follows through to the conclusion that the painting wants to convince that it is a real golden object and that the surrounding background is gold too. The Background is the negative of the “trompe d’oeil” - it wants to be gold too. It is flat and the distance between the object leaves a lot of space. The flatness of the surface leads to and intellectual flatness and nothingness. Gold has no intellectual value - gold has a spiritual value (according to the book of symbols, Taschen), but gold it consumerism, gold is the 1%, gold rhymes with cold even though it may have a shiny warm glow. We can look at it and see it reflect our soul.