Kota Okuda

NowHere is pleased to present Butterfly Effect by Japanese artist Kota Okuda.

The one-dollar bill is the lowest and the humblest denomination. But it is also the foundational denomination, the single unit to which all the others break down.

Kota Okuda examines the one-dollar bill in minute detail in his work. He blows it up, prods and pokes at it, reconfigures and recontextualizes it. The symbolic value of currency—these pieces of paper that occupy our minds and lives—fascinates Okuda.

In Okuda’s treatment of the one-dollar bill, in his manipulation of the many elements that comprise it, we are forced to reconsider our preconceived notions about money and its power—as well as its aesthetics. Okuda not only draws out questions regarding economics; he also plays with the pure, arcane, Masonic beauty of the dollar. From its portrait of America’s favorite founding father, to its ominous Latin texts, to the uncanny spookiness of the all-seeing eye and the dense webbing of the bill’s background, Okuda manipulates the familiar until it becomes new again.

Okuda’s work in this exhibition is also about the elusive nature of causality. How can one small change—and, for most of us, a dollar is merely that: change—impact the world at large? How can the whispering of a butterfly’s wings lead to a gust of wind on the other side of the world?

There are almost 13 billion one-dollar bills in circulation today. That’s almost 13 billion last chances and fresh starts. 13 billion pairs of butterfly wings that, with one small flap, can echo in both creative and destructive ways.