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Chris Jordan: Impossible Numbers

By bioephemera on February 11, 2010.

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Year of the Tiger, 2010
Chris Jordan

Depicts 3200 toy tigers, equal to the estimated number of tigers remaining on Earth. The space in the middle would hold 40,000 of these tigers, equal to the global tiger population in 1970.

SEED has put together a slideshow of works by Chris Jordan, an artist I mentioned in last week's review of Visual Language (he did the Barbie doll breast image), and also in an October post on his photos of the tragic birds of Midway.

"I believe it is worth connecting with these issues and allowing them to matter to us personally, despite the complex mixtures of anger, fear, grief, and rage that this process can entail. Perhaps these uncomfortable feelings can become part of what connects us, serving as fuel for courageous individual and collective action as citizens of a new kind of global community. This hope continues to motivate my work." - Chris Jordan

Jordan has a new book out called Running the Numbers of large-scale artworks depicting difficult-to-visualize quantities. The SEED slideshow includes about a dozen of these, or you can see more at his website.

PS. Just for PP, a zoomed-in shot of the tigers in the border of the artwork above:

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Artists & Art
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Conspicuous consumption

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