For this event Mr. Rowland asked us that any beer we were going to offering should be 'Gold Class'. When someone entered the space, they would discover not only Rowland's boom-box, in painted gold playing his neighbor's music but also the shelf, a bunch of trash and a collection of photo/drawings also painted gold. In addition, the beer container and its contents were also painted gold. To the best of our abilities ESL accommodated the request for providing 'gold standard' beer.
Rowland launched the project from his neighborhood in Pasadena, where the city had just opened the Gold Line train. He began to collect innumerable gold colored objects, painting additonal gold on some of them. This collection was presented at ESL and accompanied by a local, generous and well-paid paletero.
Blocks of Gold opens a discussion about the redunancies and ironies that are constituted in capitalism. Where one man's trash is another man's gold, the accolades and metaphors that gold generates, hightens the meaning of the mineral, while suspending its exchange and use value, as it embraces the spoils of its value as a sign.
According to Tyler Rowland, this event marked the first time he has 'explored issues of the gold standard, the American Dream, and materialism'. Oddly enough Mr. Rowland sold some of his 'trash-art' during the event. His one stipulation to the purchasers: the artworks must be paid for in their equivalent value in gold. Gold is turned into trash, and back into gold again.
