In the early 1980s, a curious thing happened to pennies. The value of a penny- sized piece of copper rose above one cent, making the coins more valuable as raw material than as currency. That’s why pennies minted since 1982 have contained a zinc core plated by a thin veneer of copper.
The switch to zinc wasn’t the first time zinc was used to preserve more valuable materials. Shipbuilders use zinc in sacrificial anodes—panels designed to attract corrosive energies away from the functional parts of the vessel. There’s a sort of inverted heroism to these applications. Zinc is useful precisely because we value it less.
In Moving-Metal, Matt Browning’s exhibition currently on view at Veronica, the modest metal is given space to revel in its own physicality—zinc for zinc’s sake.