Saturday, January 31, 2004
Drawing economics
Mark Lombardi (1951–2000) was an artist whose studio practice involved the obsessive tracking of just such mass corporate and political malfeasance. Pursuing his stories through various public-domain sources, Lombardi created exquisitely geometrical, airily complex pencil drawings that trace the connections and chronologies underlying corporate fiascoes like the failure of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), the looting of the Savings and Loan industry, the internecine duplicity of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro and the Vatican, or the affairs of Bill Clintons Arkansas cronies the Lippo Group. Blending pop assumptions with conceptualist technique, and approaching the art/life divide as if it were a panel of mirrored glass, Lombardi made a practice of updating his drawings when new facts in a given story came to light. Were he alive now, he would surely be composing a new version of a small work begun in 1999 called George W. Bush, Harken Energy and Jackson Stephens, c. 1979-90, 5th Version (1999).
Via racoon: notes and scavagings, Relatable: Mark Lombardi Draws Economics
Very cool art. Who thought one could draw economics?
