Inner World E - Gallery

LATEST SERIES - EUTROPHIA



Blueprints for a City Situated on a River of Ammonia, 2006. oil, silkscreen, chalk, crayon, and pencil on canvas. 42" x 54"

In 1909 a process was developed by which nitrogen could be extracted from the air with the help of heated water and natural gas. The product of this reaction is a pyramid-shaped compound of nitrogen and hydrogen called ammonia. The compound facilitated the production of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and the process of large-scale refrigeration, developments which multiplied agricultural production and human population. Ammonia is also central to the manufacture of explosives and many chemical weapons, and its ready availability led to an age of greater scale and horror in war. Agricultural use has also created widespread instances of an environmental imbalance called eutrophication, where access to shared resources is essentially choked off by the multiplication of nitrogen-hungry plant species within an ecosystem. Before ammonia could be extracted through a chemical process, there was an extremely limited amount of usable nitrogen available, meaning that people had to make a choice: do I feed people or build a bomb? The choice to create or destroy no longer has to be made and the result is phenomenal; it’s clear that when a resource is unlimited, people will do any damn thing, even adding ammonia to tobacco so that the nicotine goes to your head faster. Does this phenomenon apply to less tangible resources? Thanks to new technology there’s an abundance of information, communication, computing power, surveillance, and even entertainment. All are seemingly available out of thin air, and none require us to make the critical choice: why this and not something else? We can seemingly have it all, but without scarcity we expand and extend our range, and the margins - with whatever details or mysteries they contain - are gone.