United States · Pop art Rency on legal-tender paper

Rency — from currency; on these pieces the artist often signs in capitals RENCY — is an anonymous United States pop and street artist who works on genuine notes. Dealer copy that likens the work to Banksy is marketing, not a documented fact. This is not Rency Punnoose, a designer in another field.

The substrate is legal-tender paper, not a BEP redesign or a Treasury issue: chiefly the Federal Reserve $1 and $2. The $2 FRN returned in 1976, on the 233rd anniversary of Jefferson’s birth, after the United States Note of that denomination had been halted in 1966.

The case holds Pelé / The Beautiful Game, edition 5/200 — a $1 face with a pop overlay and a $2 reverse, plate 52 —; Messi / You Have to Fight to Reach Your Dream, edition 2/222 — a Lionel Messi pop face on legal-tender paper and a $2 reverse with “LFG!” and “2022!” —; Life Is Beautiful / LIFE SPRAY, also 5/200, with eight LIFE SPRAY cans and a $2 reverse; Warhol & Basquiat / Life Is Beautiful, a $2 intervened on both faces, plate 23, with a manuscript Rency signature and no edition fraction; and Trump / Never Surrender, a vertical collage of the 2023 Fulton County mugshot on a $2 reverse photographed upright, also with a manuscript Rency and no edition fraction. Pelé, Messi, LIFE SPRAY, and Warhol–Basquiat show printed serial F71235101A; they are not the same object. On Never Surrender the paper serial is not readable.