“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”

– Attributed to Henry Ford, originally by Charles Binderup,1937

Fear and Greed by Gordon Cheung is a limited edition print portfolio that accompanies Transfer of Power, Cheung’s 2021 solo exhibition debut in Los Angeles. This collection of archival fine art inkjet prints comprises six single tulip images appropriated from Dutch Golden Age still life paintings and four contemporary portraits of blockchain industry leaders, transformed in Cheung’s iconic glitch technique. Each print is animated via augmented reality app, available to download in the App Store and GooglePlay. Fear and Greed also has various integrated AI and blockchain technologies sponsored by the Swiss technology company SmartStamp.

The title of Fear and Greed is in reference to a stock market index term that quantifies what it believes to be the two main emotions that drive the market. The portfolio explores histories that span over 380 years with the first recorded market bubble and crash called “Tulipomania” that marked the birth of global modern capitalism to today’s mass adoption of blockchain technology epitomised by Bitcoin as a pillar of the Fourth industrial Revolution.

Bitcoin was conceptualized after the 2008 financial crisis when the US government printed trillions of dollars in an attempt to resuscitate the economy. The Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated the global recession into what could be a depression, spurring centralised bankers to print money into the trillions, creating a fear of hyperinflation, diluting purchasing power, and leading to an exodus of dollars into other assets — such as Bitcoin. Blockchain, a decentralised ledger system, is what underpins the existence of cryptocurrency, making it near impossible to counterfeit, thus ensuring a highly reliable system of authenticity. In 2021, the traditional financial institutions are ‘panic buying’ into Bitcoin, signalling a monetary revolution as they respond to a potential collapse of the dollar and its status as the world reserve currency.

Cheung uses a digital sorting algorithm to non-destructively reorganise photographic pixels to metaphorically suggest rhyming histories that he visually calls ‘digital sands of time.’ In an increasingly digital age that reconfigures our perceptions of reality into a state of constant flux, Cheung is compelled to bear witness to historic and revolutionary moments of humanity. Interwoven within these historical timelines and technological processes are the human conditions of what it means to exist within these cycles of histories to meditate on the past, present, and futures about who we are and what we can become.

“Having known Gordon for many years in my role as a museum curator, I have followed his career closely ever since we met for a 2006 exhibition. It is a great pleasure to work together again on such a special art technology collaboration for work that timely draws from the rapidly changing financial and technology markets. Melding elements of classical beauty from the canon of art history together with the fragmented, multiplex culture of idealism and dystopia that is both cause and reaction of our Fourth Industrial Revolution, Gordon -- with this portfolio -- continues to seduce us with his palpable vision of the transforming world and proves he’s a master of taking the pulse of our collective culture.” -- Juli Cho Bailer, CEO and Co-Founder of SmartStamp

The Swiss tech company, SmartStamp, is the proud technology sponsor of the Fear and Greed print portfolio. SmartStamp uses computer vision and AI, secured with eco-friendly blockchain timestamping, to create revolutionary, immutable, digital fingerprints of objects of art in order to verify their authenticity.