Bitcoin Painting

Why Bitcoin Paintings give a golden body to a currency that doesn't have one

These Bitcoin Paintings show a piece that no one has ever held in their hand

The first instinct in front of these Bitcoin Paintings is to look for relief: the striated edge, the bulge of the metal, the small white speck that runs along the curve. Everything is there, up to the cast shadow. Yet the object depicted has never been struck anywhere : this currency only exists in a shared register, a sequence of writings that no one can weigh. The canvases make up for this lack with application, borrowing from ancient coins their thickness, their roundness and their way of catching the light.

This invention is nothing like a painter's whim. Look at the scale given to the disc: it holds the center of the canvas like a moon rising, beyond measure from a currency that would be slipped between two fingers. Flemish traders weighed their escudos on a balance, still lifes piled up ducats on the edge of a table; here, no pile, no plate, no outstretched hand. Lacking anything to count, painting enlarges a single piece until it weighs, by itself, the entire wall.

A coin without an effigy: what remains when the sovereign disappears?

Look at what is missing in the center of the Bitcoin Paintings: no profile of a king, no laurel wreath, no bust turned to the right. Where two thousand years of currency have placed the face of the one who guaranteed the value, these canvases leave a bare sigle, a barred letter that refers to no one. The disc retains the shape of the coin and loses its portrait. It is perhaps the most faithful detail of the entire collection, since this currency actually has no face to engrave.

This void changes the way the image is read. A monetary portrait directs the gaze towards a character and tells of their reign; here, nothing holds the eye in the center, and the color surrounding the piece takes on all the importance. Hung in an entrance or above a desk, this anonymous disc functions as an emblem rather than a portrait : it imposes no historical figure, only a round and brilliant form that each fills with what they project into it, enthusiasm as well as mistrust.

Where does the light come from that illuminates these golden discs?

On these Bitcoin Tableaux, the piece does not reflect a lamp: it illuminates. The halo spreads to the edges, tints the clouds, sometimes extends in rays, and nothing in the composition indicates where the source would come from. This way of making gold a hearth and not a mirror comes from very far away, from Byzantine gold backgrounds, icons and altarpieces, where the metal did not represent a material but a clarity without terrestrial origin. The process is ancient, the subject is not fifteen years old.

The borrowing is perfect for a value commonly called digital gold, and whose creation is due to a calculation carried out day and night, without sun or season. On the wall, the effect is very concrete: these canvases support the dark pieces, the dimly lit corridors, the deep walls where most images fade. The golden point continues to function there as a small autonomous source, and it is almost always the first thing you see from the other end of the room, before even distinguishing the colors of the background.

What the purple and fuchsia palette of the Bitcoin Tableaux owes to a market that never closes

Why do the Bitcoin Tableaux choose the purple hour rather than daylight?

None of these Bitcoin Tableaux are set at noon. The backgrounds are mauve, indigo, sometimes almost black on the edges, with that lighter band that announces either an aurora, or the end of the day, without ever being able to decide. This fluctuation is not a painter's convenience. The value represented here is traded without interruption, at night, on Sundays, at the time when all other places in the world have turned off their screens: there is no closing time to paint.

Where does this suspended sky come from, which gives the whole its particular climate. At home, this low light has a specific advantage: it does not fight the evening lighting. An image in full sun seems false as soon as the lamps light up; these purple skies, on the other hand, awaken at that moment. This is why the collection fits so well in a living room that is mostly lived at night, or in a study where one stays up late.

Why is the gold of the piece always surrounded by fuchsia and turquoise

The golden yellow of the Bitcoin Tableaux would only be a dull circle if it were placed on beige. It is almost always surrounded by its opposites on the color wheel : purple, fuchsia, turquoise, deep blue. It is the old rule of complementary colors, the one that makes an orange vibrate against a blue, applied here without the slightest restraint. The color usually associated with this subject is an orange signaling color; the canvases push it towards gold and give it neighbors the only nuances capable of intensifying it even more.

This mechanism decides the hanging. On a light wall, the fuchsia and indigo cut out the canvas clearly and make it stand alone, without any other image around. On a dark wall, it is the golden disc that stands out while the rest sinks into the gloom. Two very different readings for the same works, depending on the background they are given, which explains that these golden pieces are found in both very colorful interiors and deliberately sober rooms where they do all the work.

The red in these canvases no longer announces a loss

There's red in several Bitcoin Paintings: vermillion, embers, sometimes veritable incandescent whirlwinds around the metal. On a quotation screen, this color has a single, unpleasant meaning, it signals the fall, the day one prefers to forget. Painted, it completely loses this function. It becomes what it was long before markets: the color of warmth, fire, beating blood. The same signal, returned as pure sensation by the simple fact of being placed on a canvas.

This is perhaps the best reason to hang these images rather than display a framed curve. A graph freezes a specific moment and ages quickly; a color, no. The vermillion and turquoise will continue to respond to each other in ten years exactly as they do today, whatever the state of the market that day. The collection transforms a vocabulary of gains and losses into colored matter, which makes it bearable on a daily basis, even for those who follow this subject closely and do not want to think about it constantly.

Waves, flames and flowers: what the Bitcoin Paintings borrow from the vocabulary of markets

Why water and fire around the piece of Bitcoin Paintings?

The Bitcoin Paintings regularly place their golden piece amidst two elements that should have nothing to do with currency: blue waves crashing, flames rising. The explanation lies in the language of the markets themselves, which has never known how to speak of money other than with water and fire. It speaks of liquidity, flows, freezing, overheating, soaring prices. These canvases simply take the words at their literal meaning.

The result gives very mobile compositions, where the gaze turns rather than stops. This is a rare movement in an interior : most hung images are calm, and these are not. They suit walls that are walked along rather than those that are contemplated while sitting, a hallway, an ascending staircase, the panel that is discovered upon entering. Painted movement meets the real movement of the passerby, and the golden piece serves as an anchor for the whole.

A piece at the heart of the petals: blossoming as a figure of value

Several Bitcoin Paintings replace the sky with a field: open corollas, purple poppies, petals tightly surrounding the metal as around a pistil. The comparison seems strange until one listens to the vocabulary used for this value, which is said to be emerging, whose blossoming, flowering of prices, or bubble is announced. The flower is also the classic figure of what promises much and lasts little, and the poppy, which withers the very day it is picked, provides the clearest example.

These canvases are the softest in the collection and the least immediate to decode. The piece is often half-hidden, slipped between the stems rather than presented face-on, so that the image becomes a treasure to be rediscovered rather than an exposed fortune. This is a very old scene: for centuries, currencies have resurfaced from plowed fields, buried out of prudence then forgotten. This value knows the same fate in its way, with these sums made inaccessible forever by a lost key. Inviting you to approach the wall instead of looking from afar.

Everything turns, except her: the golden piece never leaves the center

Compare two Bitcoin paintings side by side and a rule emerges: whatever the surrounding chaos, swirl, froth or explosion of petals, the piece occupies the center and doesn't move an inch. The composition is concentric, almost like a rose window. Now this is exactly the structure of what is represented: a fixed quantity, decided once and for all, around which a price soars without ever undermining it. The painting has found the right form without needing to explain it.

For a wall, this organization is valuable. A painting built around a center stands alone, without needing to be balanced by anything else: the eye immediately finds where to settle, then goes to explore the turbulence around it. This is what allows these works to be hung above a low piece of furniture, in a recess or at the end of a hallway without anything seeming to be missing next to it. The chaos is framed by a perfectly round shape, and the whole remains readable from the other end of the room.

FAQ on bitcoin paintings

Do you need to own bitcoins to hang these paintings in your home?

No, and that's even the whole point of this collection. Before being a currency, the golden disc is read as a sun, a flower or a target: a round and luminous shape that works for any eye. Those who know the subject add a layer of reading, the barred letter, the absence of face, the waves of volatility. The two readings coexist without hindering each other, and no one needs to explain the painting to their guests.

Why don't these canvases show price charts or screens?

Because a curve ages. A chart refers to a specific date and becomes, after a few months, the memory of a particular moment, good or bad. The golden piece, on the other hand, says nothing about a price: it gives the subject a body without freezing it in a number. It's also a matter of painting. A fine line on a white background has no presence on a wall, where a solar metal edged with purple has a lot.

What distinguishes these golden pieces from a collection on gold or banknotes?

The setting, or rather its absence. Classic silver images are surrounded by safes, stacks of bills, ingots piled up, bank columns. Here, the golden piece floats alone in a sky, a wave or a field of flowers: no building, no hand to hold it, no teller. This is faithful to a value that has no headquarters, no agency, no warehouse. This weightlessness brings these canvases closer to the landscape than to the still life.