Borofsky’s numbering system, whereby he counted continuously from one, assigning each work the number he had reached when it was made, is one of the most sustained conceptual gestures in American art of the 1970s and 1980s, converting the entire output of a career into a single arithmetic sequence and equalizing drawings on napkins with museum installations. The number 2,841,791 places this work well into the series, which had grown from Borofsky’s private counting practice into a public system exhibited as complete sequences of numbered papers alongside paintings and sculptures. The Chattering Man is a painted wooden figure with an electric motor moving the figure’s jaw up and down while a separate recording by the artist plays in a loop repeating “chatter, chatter, chatter,” a meaningless phrase droning on as the figure stares at a meaningless painting. Borofsky thereby converts the static canvas into a kinetic theater, making the viewer simultaneously the audience for the painted image and the listener to a performance of compulsive speech.
