Michael Najjar's work dow jones_80-09 (2008) is on view in the exhibition "Horizonte y límite. Visiones del paisaje" at CaixaForum Barcelona, which takes a new look at our relationship with the landscape and our conception of it. In a long tradition of using the landscape as a pictorial genre, today it has returned to centre stage due to the creative possibilities made possible by digital technology and due to the concern caused by the destruction of nature and the threat of climate change.
In January 2009 Michael Najjar stood on the summit of Mount Aconcagua, at 6,962 meters the highest mountain in the world outside of the Himalayas. The photographic material gathered in the course of the three week trek forms the basis of Najjar's "high altitude" work series. The series visualizes the development of the leading global stock market indices over a period of 30 years. The virtual data of the stock market charts are resublimated in the craggy materiality of the Argentinean mountainscape. The work "dow jones_80-09" visualizes pricesly the development of the Dow Jones Index from 1980 to 2009.
