The Chilean artist Diego Fernández installs floor-to-ceiling pictures in the message salon that redefine the exhibition space architecturally. The motifs show American quarter-dollar coins that were issued between 1999 and 2008 under the title “The 50 State Quarters”. The design of each quarter dollar coin was commissioned by a US state. The respective motifs, such as personalities, technical achievements, symbols or landscapes, were intended to represent the respective state. The series “The 50 State Quarter” was a great success in the USA and the collector’s value of individual coins now far exceeds the value of a quarter of a dollar in some cases.
Diego Fernández uses the individual motifs of the coins and assembles them in large picture panels to create wall-high panoramas. The artist has digitally enlarged his filigree original drawings, printed them out, glued them onto the canvas like a collage and painted them. The merging into a large whole symbolises the significance of the US dollar as the epitome of the USA and its idea of unification. The pathetics of the patriotic motifs appear as an absurd exaggeration and worship of the coin, or of money itself.
For the vernissage, Diego Fernandez has invited his friend Dagobert from Berlin to sing a few of his melancholically happy heartbreak songs. Dagobert, the crooner from the mountains, has emigrated from Switzerland to Berlin, where he is seeking his fortune as a pop star.
In 2005, Diego Fernandez and his artist friends Felipe Mujica and Joanna Unzueta were guests at the message salon in connection with Galeria Chilena with a group exhibition. Diego Fernandez, born in Santiago de Chile, has lived in Brooklyn, New York since 2000 and works in New York, Berlin and Chile.