[simulacra & simulations]
SIMULACRA AND SIMULATION
2020
Artist Books, Plaster Replicas of Historical Korean Currency, Wood, Archival Foam
Antwerp, Belgium
Every civilisation leaves behind its currencies.
Coins.
Relics.
Fragments of value.
Yet value itself possesses no form. It cannot be touched directly. It survives through collective agreement, sustained by belief and repeated through exchange.
Gold possesses value because it is recognised.
Currency possesses value because it is recognised.
A replica possesses value because it is recognised.
The distinction is far less stable than it first appears.
Simulacra and Simulation emerged from an extended engagement with Jean Baudrillard's writings on replication, value, and the disappearance of origins. If earlier works questioned the relationship between signifier and signified, this work concerns itself with a more unsettling proposition: the possibility that the copy may eventually become more significant than the original itself.
At the centre of the installation rest two books.
Accumulated over years of research, they contain sketches, essays, diagrams, references, observations, and material experiments developed throughout the Sign and Significant and Simulacra and Simulation series. They function not as documentation, but as autonomous works preserving the intellectual archaeology from which later objects emerged.
Beside them rests a collection of historical Korean currency.
Originally cast in silver and gold, these objects once derived their value from material scarcity. Precious metal guaranteed belief. Weight guaranteed worth.
Through mould making and replication, each currency was reproduced in plaster.
The dimensions remain.
The markings remain.
The image remains.
Only the material disappears.
Gold becomes dust.
Silver becomes powder.
Yet despite this transformation, the objects continue to perform value.
Displayed within a custom archival case, protected and elevated like treasured artefacts, the replicas retain an aura that exceeds their material condition. They remain convincing despite possessing none of the properties upon which their original value depended.
The work therefore occupies a peculiar threshold.
The object is no longer currency.
Nor is it merely sculpture.
Instead it exists as the image of value itself.
A replica of belief.
A copy of worth.
A simulation of authenticity.
The work proposes that value has perhaps always operated in this manner. That gold itself is no less dependent upon collective faith than plaster. That meaning survives not because of material, but because of agreement.
The replica does not destroy the original.
It reveals its fragility.
Copyright © TAEHYUNLEE, All Rights Reserved.