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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE



JOSH HARLAN Announces New Series
Based on Movement Patterns in Metro Areas During COVID-19



"Behind each visually-captivating panel exists a story told in data.

Visual displays of information help us make sense of a complex world. My body of work draws on visual displays related to finance, telecommunications, epidemiology, politics, and transportation. By eliminating key signifiers (words, numbers, legends, and explanations), I transform these visual displays of information into works of geometric abstraction.

The result has a dual quality: on the one hand, development of abstractions with pleasing formal and aesthetic qualities, and on the other hand, a lingering sense, conveyed by the highly structured nature of the resulting images, of some kind of significance, a dissonance, or encoded meaning that lies just beyond reach."
— Josh Harlan
[Artist Statement]

Katya Series, 2020:
 "Katya" is a news series of 18 works by artist Josh Harlan developed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The series is named after Harlan’s daughter, Katya, who was born into the coronavirus crisis in April 2020.
Katya explores changes in daily movements by people in various metro areas following the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, based on location tracking data from cell phones.

The source data traces movement beginning in mid-February 2020 through the end of March. Compared to historical averages for this time of year, the scale of movement with plummets far below usual after mid-March, when the Federal government asked people to stay at home to slow the spread of the virus.

The data explores the relationship between socioeconomic status and activity patterns during the crisis, with movement in upper income areas depicted in blue and lower income areas depicted in red. 
Explanatory Drawing
The Katya series explores changes in daily movements by people in various metro areas following the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, based on location tracking data from cell phones.
In the source image, the x-axis depicts time, ranging from mid-February 2020 through the end of March. The y-axis depicts the scale of movement in comparison to historical averages for this time of year, with activity plummeting far below usual after mid-March, when the Federal government asked people to stay at home to slow the spread of the virus.

The source data is structured to explore the relationship between socioeconomic status and activity patterns during the crisis, with movement in upper income areas depicted in blue and lower income areas depicted in red.
In creating the series, Josh extracts a series of equal-sized fragments of the source image with proportions set in the “golden ratio” (approximately 1.62:1).

The fragments are assembled intuitively to capture areas of the chart that have attractive formal qualities. The fragments are recolored at the artist’s discretion. The completed images are produced as dye-sublimation prints on metal.


[Works available on request of via PDF above.] 


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