Claire Salvo’s Dalí reimagines the U.S. dollar as a surrealist dreamscape, transforming the familiar symbol of commerce into a meditation on illusion, power, and imagination. Painted in acrylic directly onto a dollar bill, the work references Salvador Dalí’s The Elephants - one of the artist’s most enduring visions of fragility and grandeur, where impossibly long-legged creatures stride across a burning horizon.

By placing Dalí’s surreal world within the rigid confines of American currency, Salvo creates a striking tension between the irrational and the institutional, between dream and economy. The orange and gold tones of the sunset radiate warmth and theatricality, enveloping George Washington’s stoic portrait in a landscape of boundless fantasy.

Dalí epitomizes Salvo’s fascination with re-contextualizing icons of art and value. In merging surrealism’s boundless imagination with the structure of money, she invites viewers to question what is real, what is worth, and how art continues to reshape both.