2012Sculpture / Installation
Art For Money, Money For Art
Three sculptures on economic archetypes. Post-2008.
Three sculptural works produced in 2012, four years after the 2008 financial crisis had made the architecture of economic behavior newly visible.
Each work takes the form of an animal drawn from fable tradition — specifically from La Fontaine, whose moral economy maps cleanly onto financial archetypes. The three figures are: The Saver, a squirrel hoarding gold coins; The Golddigger, a blind mole pursuing wealth without sight of what lies ahead; and Elfi, a shattered piggy bank — the poor little rich pig, broken open, contents gone.
The animals are not metaphors in the decorative sense. They are precise behavioral models. The squirrel accumulates against future loss. The mole advances without information. The pig was full and is now empty. Together they describe a complete cycle: accumulation, speculation, collapse. The cycle the works were made inside.
The installation's second subject is the relationship between art and the financial systems that fund, value, and circulate it. The title states this directly and without irony. Art for money. Money for art. The exchange runs in both directions and neither direction is clean. The work does not propose an alternative to this condition. It names it.
Three sculptures. 2012.
Each work takes the form of an animal drawn from fable tradition — specifically from La Fontaine, whose moral economy maps cleanly onto financial archetypes. The three figures are: The Saver, a squirrel hoarding gold coins; The Golddigger, a blind mole pursuing wealth without sight of what lies ahead; and Elfi, a shattered piggy bank — the poor little rich pig, broken open, contents gone.
The animals are not metaphors in the decorative sense. They are precise behavioral models. The squirrel accumulates against future loss. The mole advances without information. The pig was full and is now empty. Together they describe a complete cycle: accumulation, speculation, collapse. The cycle the works were made inside.
The installation's second subject is the relationship between art and the financial systems that fund, value, and circulate it. The title states this directly and without irony. Art for money. Money for art. The exchange runs in both directions and neither direction is clean. The work does not propose an alternative to this condition. It names it.
Three sculptures. 2012.