Mikel Olazabal, The Crisis, c. 2008

When the whole world would talk of nothing but the economic crisis in 2008, Olazabal got to thinking about what a real personal crisis would look like. He imagined people dropped out in the jungle on the other side of the world, “without a phone or GPS, without food, without preparation, without a way to get home, and nobody cares if they get back. That seemed like a crisis to me.” Olazabal thought of all the fantastic ways this situation has been dealt with in fiction novels, TV, and movies, and yet, how we have lost the lessons that real people in history have to teach us about being lost in the jungle. He painted realistic men lost in an unknown world, who have “…nothing except fear, in absolute crisis.”

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