Betz Capital

Betz Capital is not a gallery in the commercial sense, and not a bank in the fiduciary one. It is an issuing house that has chosen the manners of a museum: sequential rooms, wall labels, a catalogue, a covenant with the visitor. What it issues is art. What it withholds is the sale.

Ryan Ellis Betz treats the photograph as a banknote and the banknote as a photograph. The market, the body, and prayer remain one medium. What changes here is the assignment of value. The rooms write a face value in billions so that looking cannot be casual.

The three works presently on view are unique chromogenic prints. Each is accessioned, serialised, and held in perpetuity. They are not securities. They are artworks dressed in the full costume of money, so that a walk through the house becomes an act of trust.