Comprising paintings, drawings and a display of books, printed matter and other ephemera, ‘The Money Plot’, drew on autobiographical material from the artist’s own Soviet childhood as a starting point. The works plotted a serendipitous course through an imagined, personal history of the birth of modern consumer society. The thesis offered an empathic response to the vast, vital energies of capital flows that animate our world.
The title of the exhibition was taken from an appendix of Balzac's novel La Cousine Bette, in which the editors provided a synopsis called ‘The money plot’ – a breakdown of debts, financial dependencies and connections between the protagonists. As the global financial crisis escalated in 2008, the project became charged with an uncanny cultural urgency.
The exhibition was one major outcome for this large research project, which linked several artistic and cultural modes into an accompanying visual essay. It deployed a multidisciplinary approach to visual production that looked at literature, biography, design and architecture to create works that exist as contemporary art in conversation with the other disciplines.
Related outcomes included the group shows ‘Natural Wonders, New Art From London’, Baibakov Art Projects, Moscow (2009) and ‘Il Faut Être Absolument Moderne’, Paradise Row, Istanbul (2009–10).
‘The Money Plot’ was extensively covered in the international art press, including: ‘Margarita Gluzberg’ (The Money Plot, Paradise Row), ‘Critic’s picks’ by Laura K. Jones for Artforum.com (2008); ‘The Money Plot’, by Charles Darwent, Art Review (2008); ‘Manifesting commerce’, interview with Eva Pelczer, New York Arts Magazine (2008); ‘The plot unfolds’, interview by Peter Carty, Mute magazine (2010); ‘Margarita Gluzberg’, feature, Citizen K International (2009); ‘The colour of money’ by Lee Johnson, Art India (2008); and ‘The fashion for modesty’, interview with Clare Carolin, Block Magazine (2010).