Francesc Ruiz explored some of the most iconic graphic designs of corporate images and symbols of identity in his exhibition 'CORREOS' ['Mail'] at the García Gallery (Madrid, 2016), paying particular attention to the Spanish postal service and its visual branding marks. He then decided to broaden his scope to other public areas and began to investigate the work of historic designer José María Cruz Novillo, who created logos for some of Spain's biggest corporations and institutions of the past 40 years (Prisa, Endesa, El Mundo, Cope, PSOE, Renfe, Repsol and many more) and indeed for the Banco de España, which commissioned him to design the set of 1000, 2000, 5000 and 10000 peseta notes which were in circulation from 1982 to 1987. This was the penultimate set prior to the introduction of the euro.

Here, Francesc Ruiz returns to these obsolete banknotes and comes up with an ironic reformulation that creates a subtle feeling of estrangement in the faces of the personages depicted on each note: Juan Ramón Jiménez, Benito Pérez Galdós, Clarín, Rosalía de Castro, King Juan Carlos I and the then Crown Prince Felipe. Each panel of this surprising grid of banknotes is subtly manipulated, building up a look which, by dint of repetition, reveals how attractive engraved portraits can be (that of Galdós, for instance, is based on a painting by Joaquín Sorolla that hangs in the Perez Galdós House Museum in Las Palmas on the island of Gran Canaria). At the same time, they provide a microscopic view that brings to light every nuance of facial expression. The succession of faces seems to be wondering why they are appearing on banknotes, and how that will affect the way they are seen in the collective imagination of the public forever. Does it taint them with the non-negotiable value of money or condemn them to ostracism? Because there is no better way to forget an image (and its deepest meaning) than to reproduce it by the thousand and use it every day for monetary transactions.

Carlos Martín