Gabriel Kuri coin and cigarette butt board HLRP02, 2014

Gabriel Kuri's sculpture consists of a felt message board typically found in public institutions or corporate lobbies to direct visitors. A variety of items have been placed in dispersed clusters on the board. Among these are objects that are recurring motifs in the artist's formal vocabulary: cigarette butts and coins. As signs of expenditure of currency, time or personal resources, the individual items become symbols within a language of references to larger social issues.

Cigarette butts in particular have been a recurring motif. In the artist's words: “Cigarette butts are a recognizable and universally repugnant form of littering. The coins imply there’s money and wealth, but also, small change is an almost negligible fragment of wealth.” Coins, both actual currency and monumentally enlarged coins, then also recur and have served a double role as marker of monetary exchange and symbols of fortune or good luck.