Chris Jordan is my new art hero.
A socially-conscious photographer based in Seattle who has captured the devastation of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina like no one other, Chris is wowing the art world with his giant-sized prints he calls "Running The Numbers, An American Self-Portrait." His site generated quite the buzz around the Airborne offices this week.
While most of these super-Surprising pictures are a gorgeous but graphic depiction of some less-than-ideal slice of American life (for example, a five-by-ten-foot shot of 2.5 million plastic bottles, the number used in the U.S. every hour, or the Damien Hirst-like photo of 213,000 Vicodin pills, equal to the number of emergency room visits yearly in the US related to misuse or abuse of prescription pain killers), others use a photomosaic-esque process to make a even louder statement (like a black-and-white image of a pristine mountain and lake scene,made up of 24,000 logos from the GMC Yukon Denali, equal to six weeks of sales of that model SUV in 2004).
My favorite, however, is made up of soda pop cans; them there at right. That's the close-up detail of Cans Seurat, which replicates Georges Seurat's iconic Un dimanche après-midi à l'Ile de la Grande Jatte, but depicts 106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in the U.S. every thirty seconds. Below you find a slightly bigger image. For the whole shibang, check out www.chrisjordan.com and click on the Running The Numbers link.
Or deplete your bank account to the tune of $25,000-$35,000 or so...and hang it on your wall.
(Note: Can't do that, but will do the next best thing in New York at the end of the month when I get to see Chris's work at the Von Lintel Gallery.)