PAINTINGS 2 - Financial Markets
Lauren Gohara’s paintings are based on found graphics and data from online and print media. Appropriated from the financial and business sections of newspapers; financial institutional analyses and reports; and economic journals, tweets, and blogs, raw numbers and graphics are transformed into vivid pictures of increasing income and wealth inequality; the changing economic status of women; and hidden distortions in financial markets.
Visually, her paintings reference hard-edge geometric abstraction, abstract expressionism, minimalism. But in terms of subject matter, her paintings are representational. They are data-driven and period-specific rather than transcendent. Beyond self-expressive, they depict what’s happening in the lives of millions of people. Internal relationships between form, line, and color are at the service of data that directly reflect events in the real world, rather than being the product of a personal or formal process. They embrace Pop Art tactics of appropriation, graphics, and bright colors, but the source material is obscure rather than popular media. They are financial landscapes created out of invisible numbers, depicting an anxious reality that has ongoing social and political consequences.
