BROCHEVSKI
(AMAI RAWLS JR.)
Brochevski's practice operates within a fundamental paradox: he destroys the symbol of American capital to rebuild it as meaning.
Working under a studio name that separates the artist from the maker, Amai Rawls Jr. began cutting U.S. currency from a conviction that society's fixation on material status comes at the cost of inner life — a principle his work enacts literally. The process is structurally unforgiving. American currency offers exactly three colors (green, black, cream), demanding total chromatic control through layered construction, background to foreground, fragment by fragment. Using X-Acto blades, he hand-cuts real American dollar bills into hundreds of pieces, repositioning each one with surgical precision onto archival substrate. Every work begins with a single compositional sketch — one drawing, no revision, in a medium where artistic failure carries literal financial consequence. A single piece can take months. Every miscut costs real money.
The economic pressure is not metaphorical. It is load-bearing.
His subjects are solitary figures suspended in constructed landscapes — a person in a tree, surrounded by foliage built entirely from currency, sky made of paper, branches made of bills. The figure appears to have escaped the office, yet the escape is constructed from the very material that makes freedom conditional. There is no outside made of something other than money. There is no nature that isn't economic. The irony is structural, not decorative.
By destroying U.S. currency to build meaning, Brochevski takes money apart to make something money cannot replicate. The work proposes that ambition, solitude, scale, and the question of worth are inseparable from the system that assigns them value. The daydream is real. The cost of the daydream is also real.
He is interested in what survives the cutting. In what holds together after the material has been broken down and put back. In what a person can build from the very thing that determines their access to building anything at all.
Installation View: Brochevski (Amai Rawls Jr.) “Flowers” Basel Social Club, Switzerland 2025
Brochevski (Amai Rawls Jr.)
-
Brochevski (Amai Rawls Jr., b. 2000, Louisville, Kentucky) is a self-taught artist working in U.S. currency as material. He hand-cuts real American dollar bills into thousands of fragments and repositions them with surgical precision onto archival substrate. He emerged as a breakout voice at Basel Social Club 2025.
-
2026 — Basel Social Club: The Office, Post-American Fine Arts, Basel
2025 — Basel Social Club, Post-American Fine Arts, Basel
2025 — Home Sweet Home: Nostalgia...ish 3, Chicago Truborn, Chicago
2025 — May Flowers, Chicago Truborn, Chicago
2024 — Win Place Art Show, Revelry Boutique Gallery, Louisville
2024 — Back Home Again (In Indiana), Vertical Gallery, Chicago
2024 — Summer Group Show, Vertical Gallery, Chicago
2023 — Home Sweet Home: Nostalgia...ish, Chicago Truborn, Chicago
2023 — Black Boy Art Show, Atlanta
2023 — Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana Regional, Manifest Gallery, Cincinnati (Juried)
2023 — Main Floor, Revelry Boutique Gallery, Louisville
2023 — UnderGround, OneDrop World, Columbus
2023 — ALT, Revelry Boutique Gallery, Louisville
2022 — Made Of Paper, Gallery 104, Lagrange, Kentucky
2022 — No Theme Holiday Group Show, Storage Space Gallery, Indianapolis
2022 — Indiana @ The Beach, Satellite Art Show, Miami
-
2019 — Scholastic Art & Writing Award, National Gold Key
2019 — Scholastic Art & Writing Award, Regional Gold Medal, Mixed Media
-
2023 — Project Bloom, The Wall Muse, Indianapolis (mural commission)
-
The New York Times — Coverage of breakout artist (2022)
Louisville Public Media — "Exhibition at Revelry Gallery shows Derby beyond the horse race" (2024)
Spectrum News 1 — "Artist Uses Dollar Bills As his Medium To Illustrate His Life, Discuss Mental Health" (2022)
PATTERN Magazine — Artist Series: Q+A with Amai Rawls (2022)
Canvas Rebel — "Meet Amai Rawls (Brochevski)" (2022)
IndyStar — Coverage of regional art fair (2023)
Inside Indiana Business — Industry coverage (2025)
-
Brochevski is represented by Post-American Fine Arts.
Get in Touch