> on CENTS, white albums, and collecting as art practice i first heard of Rutherford Chang 11 years ago in an article about his ongoing project We Buy White Albums, at the time consisting of a record store occupying Recess Gallery and exclusively stocking 693 second hand copies of The Beatles’ self-titled 1968 LP; in the ensuing 11 years he has amassed many more and the collection currently has 3,417 copies. the project opened my eyes to the idea of a collection of physical objects, extending the duchampian idea of a readymade to a collection of objects linked by form/function/origin, exploring the history, physical decay, and individuality of mass-produced items over time and centering the selection, presentation, and contextualization of these objects as an artistic act. there is a rich history in conceptual art of works in this vein, examples that spring to mind: Hans-Peter Feldmann's "All the Clothes of a Woman", Christian Boltanski's "Les Archives du Coeur", Song Dong's "Waste Not" those of you more familiar with my work might recognize a loose throughline between this line of thinking and some my own works such as $CAR, which presents a collection of charred fragments formerly comprising a Lamborghini and hand-ordered based on various criteria (but i digress) when i first saw CENTS it appeared clear to me that there was a bold artistic eye behind it. the idea of a platform dropping a work that strips bare the fiction of a banal object and reveals the infinite variation even a humble object like a penny can contain, without a conceptual artist involved, seemed almost absurd. i reached out and was pleasantly surprised to find that i was the first person to ask, and that the artist behind the project was none other than Rutherford Chang! the gallery of pennies was hosted on his site and linked on the project page all along, but his involvement was a bit of an open secret - @sovrnart was kind enough to let me introduce him more widely in this post now that the mint is complete, as a personal fan of Rutherford and a promoter of all things conceptual crypto art. so pleased to welcome Rutherford to our strange little world!
Rutherford is not particularly active on social media but you can check out the We Buy White Albums instagram page (instagram.com/webuywhitealbu…) and his portfolio site (rutherfordchang.com) lastly, the above post is not sponsored in any way and i am not affiliated with sovrn or any of the other entities involved - purely a fan
@SHL0MS Love this!! Thank you for sharing and for bringing brilliant conceptual thought to this platform..
@SHL0MS Great write up of a fantastic piece of conceptual art. Thank you. 👏
@SHL0MS so brilliant Shloms! So many echoes of white albums in cents you nailed it. I couldn’t put my finger on it. So happy you uncovered this!!
@SHL0MS he also did the “white album” album where it’s a bunch of white albums played simultaneously on record players and then recorded! I have one! m.soundcloud.com/dustandgrooves…
@SHL0MS thank you for this writing on Rutherford. an excellent way to shine a light on him.