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Whale, 2011Post an Event »

Electric Works

April 1 - May 8, 2011

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1360 Mission Street San Francisco, CA 94103
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Whale, 2011 Whale, 2011 by Chris Jordan
Artist Reception: Friday, April 1, 6-8 PM Chris Jordan, in Whale, 2011, depicts 50,000 plastic bags, equal to the estimated number of pieces of floating plastic per square mile in the Pacific Ocean. Jordan translates this incomprehensible number from the language of the abstract into a more visual language. His portrayal of the devastating fact of plastic pollution is made meaningful in this large-scale representation of a whale based on a photograph of a whale by Bryant Austin. In Midway: Message from the Gyre a twelve image portfolio of photographs of albatross chicks, Jordan documents albatross chicks on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific. The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking. Jordan is based in Seattle, Washington. He frequently travels to Midway Island continuing his work on the albatross. His series Running the Numbers with its influential message of the detrimental effects of mass consumption and waste has traveled the globe.