John Morris

Untitled

Untitled was part of the 2002 exhibition Drawings for the Austrian School held at the D’Amelio Terras gallery in New York. For this occasion, John Morris created a language of his own by using acrylic, ink, graphite, and ballpoint pen on paper. The exhibition title comes from Morris’ interest in the early 20th century Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter, a one time Austrian Minister of Finance, bank director, and economics professor who taught in Europe and at Harvard University. He is considered the founder of “evolutionary economics.” One of his most well-known economic terms is “creative destruction,” which states that entrepreneurs with new ideas must destroy business models and practices that came before them in order to stimulate economic change. Many of Morris’ earlier drawings are dedicated to technology companies that no longer exist, having been incorporated into larger organizations or made obsolete by changes in the market, exemplifying Schumpeter’s process. Untitled refers to these theories, layering together repetitive motifs that subtly mutate from one page to the other.