Chris Jordan (2021) Ecstatic Desolation #32 (Concrete Ring) Artwork
Artist: Chris Jordan
Title: Ecstatic Desolation #32 (Concrete Ring), Lago Llanquihue, Chile, 2021
Medium: Archival pigment print on cotton rag paper; Ultramount, white wood frame with retainer, spacers, and AR70 glass.
Print Size: 40x42.25”
Framed Size: 42x44.25”
Edition: Open edition of numbered prints; print provided with signature card for the verso
NOTE: this purchase is for the print only. If you wish to purchase the framed artwork, please contact the gallery for the price. We ship worldwide.
Artist Statement: Ecstatic Desolation
The pandemic of 2020-2021 found me stranded unexpectedly in the south of Chile, which has since become my home. Living in a small town on the shore of Lago Llanquihue, and later on the Strait of Magellan, I have explored daily along the shoreline with my camera. In the presence of the luminous subtleties of the Magellanic sea and sky, time has slowed down, and my camera exposures have stretched from seconds to minutes to hours. Underneath all the movement, a stillness has revealed itself. This experience has offered a container to hold and metabolize the dark news emanating from the US and around the world. Holding it all in balance internally is a constant challenge. I find an ally in the centering space of the horizon, beckoning the mind toward peace and a widening perspective
Bio
For two decades Chris Jordan’s internationally known photographs and conceptual artworks have probed into the dark underbelly of our culture of mass consumption. Exploring the complexities of our many forms of waste, these series have been exhibited and published worldwide, most recently with a retrospective solo exhibit at the Sungkok Art Museum in Seoul. Chris has published four books and is past winner of the Sierra Club’s Ansel Adams Prize for Conservation Photography (2010), the Prix Pictet Commission Prize in Paris (2011), and the GreenLeaf Award given by the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo (2007). His paradigm-breaking film Albatross reached a global audience with its compelling love story about birds on a remote island in the Pacific whose bodies are filled with plastic. Albatross was recipient of the 2018 Planetary Health Film Prize in London.
Chris currently lives in a small town in Patagonia, Chile on the Strait of Magellan at the tip of South America. In this space of relative isolation, his work turned in a new direction: toward the contemplation of beauty as a response to the mental chaos of our times. He has recently released several new photographic projects, all under the title “Beauty Emerging.”