Concrete realism, 2010.

Concrete Realism was made in a house whose construction was halted by the 2008 financial crash. Onto the unfinished concrete walls, I drew cracks in pencil, so convincingly rendered that the new building appeared already to be falling apart. The title folds together multiple layers: the literal concrete of the architecture, the illusionistic realism of the pencil marks, and references to the traditions of Concrete Art and Realism in art history. At once material, conceptual, and historical, the work stages an imagined decay that echoes both economic collapse and the inevitability of time.