In New York, artists sell paintings in the form of medical accounts: who buys them and why
The art collective has come up with a new way to pay off the medical debts of three people: turn their hospital bills into huge paintings and sell them to collectors for thousands of dollars. CNN.
New York-based MSCHF, known for its extraordinary art projects, has tracked down Americans with significant medical debts, including more than $ 47 in invoice. A group of artists hand-painted canvases 000 feet high (almost 6 meters), depicted on them, and sold them on the art market for exactly the amount indicated there.
In addition to paying off the debts of these people, the artists are keen to draw public attention to the US health care system. A 2019 study found that over 137 million people in the United States reported financial health difficulties.
"We think the American health care system has reached such a point of unbridled absurdity that a creative solution is the only appropriate tactic to solve this problem," said the group's head of strategy and development Daniel Greenberg, adding that the project is "a conceptual work of art, not a sound debt relief strategy."
“Our culture practically glorifies the paradigm of begging for help on GoFundMe or forcing people to rely on Twitter influence and connections to pay debts. It's horrible. In this scenario, where the only viable option for paying a medical bill is desperate workarounds, we are starting to look at increasingly niche strategies,” he added.
On the subject: Unbearable Medical Bills: What You Can Do To Get Help Paying
Paintings for sale
The project, dubbed "Medical Bill Art", began with MSCHF advertising in its magazine of the same name earlier this year. About 100 people responded to the ad and spoke about their debts, Greenberg said.
“I felt like I was punched in the stomach while I was reading the emails,” he said. “Given MSCHF’s young audience, it was especially heartbreaking to hear from high school and college students about tens of thousands of medical debts.”
According to Greenberg, after verifying that respondents had supporting documents and verifying that treatment was required “as a result of injury or accident, not violence or negligence,” the team randomly selected three people. Large oil-on-canvas copies of their medical bills were then sold to a New York gallery for a total of $ 73.
Gallery Otis now sells "shares" in paintings through its own investment platform. Using a model known as fractional ownership, where several different people share ownership of a piece of art, collectors can now buy a piece of paintings online for as little as $ 20. Although Otis sells the work for the same amount it was bought for, Greenberg suggested that it could now rise in value in the secondary market.
Although the coronavirus pandemic prevented the group from exhibiting paintings in New York, the works were made available through a virtual gallery.
On the subject: Over $ 1 million: Seattle resident cured of COVID-19 and shocked by medical bill
Commentary from the art world
MSCHF has recently made headlines with a series of so-called "drops" - a series of tongue-in-cheek art projects announced every two weeks. Last year, the team sold a laptop loaded with some of the world's most dangerous computer viruses for more than $1,3 million. In April, the group cut up a $30 print by artist Damien Hirst into pieces before selling the individual pieces for a huge profit.
As with previous projects, the team also uses Medical Bill Art to become a mirror in the expensive art world.
“One of the things about contemporary gallery paintings is how big the discrepancy is between a monochrome painting in the Chelsea gallery and its $30 price,” Greenberg explained. “When you create paintings specifically intended to be sold through a gallery ecosystem, you are consciously trying to add value to an (often visually versatile) flat surface. This could apply to the medical bill image, too, except the value goes in the opposite direction. Our task is to equalize these two things and thereby reduce them to nothing ... "
While the group is not disclosing the names of the three recipients, Greenberg said they reported feeling "happy" and also "didn't immediately believe it actually worked, it sounded so strange at the very beginning of the project."
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