The Artist
Aaron Schwarzer
Aaron Schwarzer is the creative pseudonym under which the artist works. The artist was born on 12 May 1949 in Moscow, where he lives and works. He also keeps an apartment in Berlin, which serves as the address for sales in Europe. He is active internationally.
Before turning to digital art he worked as an antiques dealer and wrote books about that trade, including Спекулянт (“The Speculator”) and Хроники спекулянта (“Chronicles of a Speculator”).
The only work
THE UNPRICED COIN (TO-001) is the artist's only artwork. He has pledged that he will never create or sell any other digital artwork, edition, series, collection or product, under THE ONLY or under any other name or pseudonym. The pledge is set out in the executed declaration and is part of the concept.
Context
The work belongs to a line of art that treats an object's value as a question rather than a given. Marcel Duchamp put an ordinary urinal in a gallery in 1917, signed with the pseudonym “R. Mutt”, and asked what makes something art. Maurizio Cattelan's Comedian (2019), a banana fixed to a wall with tape and sold as an artwork, asked what a price is worth when the object is almost nothing. These are art-historical reference points only; they do not imply any connection between those artists and this work.
THE UNPRICED COIN asks the same question the other way round: a single digital object with an asking price and no market, with its uniqueness resting on a promise.
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