Thinking Of You

Specifications

  • 2.25" X 3.5"
  • 54 LOOSELEAF CARDS PRINTED IN HIGH QUALITY COLOR / BLACK & WHITE
  • PRINTED ON 330GSM GERMAN SUPERIOR SMOOTH CARD STOCK PAPER WITH A CUSTOM BLACK CORE
  • ROUNDED, DIE-CUT EDGES
  • EACH ARTIST DECK IS HOUSED IN A UV-COATED CARDBOARD TUCK BOX, WITH THE TITLE HAND-EMBOSSED BY THE ARTIST ON THE OUTER LAYER
  • SIGNED BY THE ARTIST ON THE INNER SLEEVE OF THE BOOK HOUSING
  • FIRST EDITION OF 100 + 5 APs ; SECOND EDITION OF 250 + 2 APs

DESCRIPTION

A culmination of a half-decade of work created across numerous countries on both sides of the globe, Thinking Of You intertwines a complex range of personal projects into one, including the performance based photography of Jason Jaworski’s 1000 Miles project created in collaboration with MOCA, the process based images from his project SEA which had him developing his negatives with ash from a bomb site in Mexico City, the site-specific wandering from Rome Alone where he followed employees of several counterfeit factories in Taiwan and had his work printed at them, to the documentary theater of LABYRINTH where the artist followed a gang of little people through different slums in the Philippines where they created set pieces and scenes to act out for the camera.

Created originally as an exhibition of work spread out across two large scale installations, a mural of text and a video piece projected onto glass, the book rendition of the work is a unique production designed by the artist to evoke the feeling of shuffling through old memories, transmuting the common exhibition catalogue form into an elevated artist card deck, with each card having an artist image on one side and a strip of text on the other. Devoted as much to play as it is a personal object, each bit of text comes from the artist's personal memory and is designed to be read in any order and still be understood, accompanied by over fifty images that complement each line of text evenly. With multiple ways to read it, either through a random shuffling, a carefully considered organization, or by laying the cards out and matching them like an old children’s game of memory, the book is meant to evolve and change over time, with a different reading for every viewing.

The book was selected as one of the top ten photobooks of 2015 by 10X10 Photobooks, while the project itself was nominated for an ICP Infinity Award in the Arts category.

After its first edition of 100 sold out completely, the book was reprinted in a 2nd edition of 250 and is now available for purchase in limited quantity through the artist's publishing site SSK Press.

A signing and launch for the 2nd edition of the book is scheduled to commence at MoMA PS1 for the 2016 edition of the NY Art Book Fair at Booth N10, September 17th, 2pm.

ARTIST Text

A small screen in front of me flickers the distance and direction of Mecca.
I adjust my seat, no longer sure what my own distance is from the surface of the earth anymore; it seems like I’ve been hovering above the planet the past few days longer than I’ve been on its actual surface. Looking out the window, clouds merge and move by slowly, resembling different animals and objects floating by like cotton caught in some wind.
I stare at nothing for a moment and start to think of her, to think of you.
I think of all the people sleeping and sitting on planes around the world at any given time: a floating city or suburb blowing by with different disparate towns and villages, each with their own separate set of wings.
Her image flashes in front of me again.
The plane eventually lands and I walk off, wandering into a city I’ve never been before, whose language I grasp as well as the amount of people I know here: none at all.
I think of her again; I think of you and everything that spurred this incessant need to run and wander. To collect different contents of each continent I’ve wandered through, captured on silver or sensors and laid out here now.
At times it feels like I’m recreating an image of someone or something that I have yet to see, and each shard of memory, each sliver of a moment captured is just another torn piece of some vast unseen face or place I’m trying to reassemble. Someone and something I’m simultaneously trying to see for myself and to reveal to others.
I close my eyes and think of all those shards from that Sedona snow a year ago dwindling down like different zirconia glinting in the moonlight with mountains like mounds of paper pushed together with tall tufts of cloud moving through a setting sun-
And I can still see everything and everyone I left.
Those streets moving by slowly at a walker’s pace, less than a mile or so in front of me and nearly a thousand behind.
How everything is in a constant state of leaving and my own simultaneous longing for the past will pass me, just as the present, and just like those thoughts I had of her and the thoughts I had thinking of you.

- Jason Jaworski
2015