‘The Added Value’ is an installation presenting a series of plywood boxes installed at wall at the same height and explicitly resembling Donald Judd’s canonical work Meter Boxes (1977). Parts of the bottom plates of these objects are metallic typographical facsimiles of Euro (paper) currency, supposed to be used by the forger (Anonymous) to produce counterfeit money. The resemblance to such an iconic work of art, is that it camouflages the forger’s instruments. Recognition of being art acts as decoy, and allows these hidden tools to be transported between countries.

‘The Added Value’ is part of ‘Fragments of a Conversation with a Counterfeiter’. The project contributes to a discussion about the transformation and transportation of value, questioning the valorization of time and space in time of crisis. The series of works derives from an assumed conversation between Diego Tonus and a forger, revealing controversial thoughts related to contemporary systems that deal with the definition of value. Each artwork is the visual translation by the artist of this conversation manifested through the act of presenting objects, actions and words experienced by the forger within his practice of reproduction of value and ways of transporting it, hacking system of controls and dealing with the definition of individuality. Tonus approaches the thoughts of the counterfeiter as if they were his intellectual property, questioning the ‘counter’ of counterfeiting and appropriating his ideas.

The original series of ‘The Added Value’ (2019) is part of the MAMbo Museum collection, and was realized thanks to the support of Italian Council (3rd Edition), Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture