WOW! Running the Numbers An American Self-Portrait

[Joanne98]

http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=7
Running the Numbers
An American Self-Portrait

This new series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 426,000 cell phones retired every day. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs.

My only caveat about this series is that the prints must be seen in person to be experienced the way they are intended. As with any large artwork, their scale carries a vital part of their substance which is lost in these little web images. Hopefully the JPEGs displayed here might be enough to arouse your curiosity to attend an exhibition, or to arrange one if you are in a position to do so. The series is a work in progress, and new images will be posted as they are completed, so please stay tuned.

~chris jordan, Seattle, 2007

This series will be exhibited at the Von Lintel Gallery in New York from June 14th to the end of July. Opening reception on June 14th. More info at www.vonlintel.com.

Building Blocks, 2007
16 feet tall x 32 feet wide in eighteen square panels, each sized 62x62".

Depicts nine million wooden ABC blocks, equal to the number of American children with no health insurance coverage in 2007.


Toothpicks, 2007
60x99"

Depicts 8 million toothpicks, equal to the number of trees harvested in the US every month to make the paper for mail order catalogs.


And much much more. Check it out..
http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=7

[Joanne98]

1. I tried to make the pics smaller but it would not let me...