The Beauty of Waste
From a few steps back, Chris Jordan’s Cell Phones looks like a 60x100 inch gray blur. Only upon close inspection can you see that it is actually made up of thousands of tiny cell phones, 426,000 to be precise, equal to the number retired in the US every day. This is just one example of the works in Jordan’s “Running the Numbers” exhibit, a portrait of American culture through visual representations of statistics.
The messages behind most of Jordan’s works are environmentalist. The excess waste of electricity, plastic cups, cell phones, and aluminum cans are just some examples of the subjects of his pieces, aimed at increasing awareness and encouraging personal responsibility. Jordan shows the shortsightedness of America, and sometimes the world, using immense numbers of objects that represent statistics of waste or consumption of our natural resources.
Jordan also makes political statements in his art. One piece shows the $12.5 million the US spends every hour on the war in Iraq, and his largest piece is a 10x23 feet orange wall showing 2.3 million prison uniforms (one for each American incarcerated in 2005). It is easy to see Jordan’s liberal perspective in his artwork. His Handguns (2007, depicting the 29,569 gun-related deaths in the US in 2004) practically screams gun control. However, since he is simply illustrating statistics, it is hard to ignore his point of view.
On the other hand, some of Jordan’s work lack specificity. His pieces on wasted resources beg the question: What is waste? You may attack plastic water bottles as being wasteful because they could easily be replaced by a water filter, but what is it about soda cans and plastic airline cups that is inherently wasteful when there may be no alternative? America is a large country, and the fact that 106,000 cans are used every thirty seconds may seem shocking, but it says nothing about the number recycled or how many per person that translates to. Also, some of his works do not necessarily send a clear message. For instance, Shipping Containers, which shows 38,000 containers (the amount processed through American ports every twelve hours), could be a statement about the huge impact of international trade on our economy, or it could pose questions about national security. His Prison Uniforms could speak to the strictness of our justice system that incarcerates so many people, or it could illustrate how many people commit crimes that are serious enough to get them imprisoned, two very different meanings.
Whatever Jordan is saying with his works, they are all very well constructed. In fact, despite doing essentially the same thing in each piece (showing a statistic through replicated pictures), he creates visually stunning pieces and employs a surprisingly wide variety of techniques. In his images of handguns, cell phones, and prison uniforms, he replicates identical items so that upon stepping back, the piece looks like simply a black, gray, or orange wall, reflecting the fact that we are desensitized when simply hearing these statistics as a whole, but they are very real when seen one at a time. In some, he copies well-known paintings, such as Cans Seurat, which replicates Seurat’s pointillist painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte with wasted cans, or Skull With Cigarette, which is a copy of Van Gogh’s Skull With Burning Cigarette, except with packs of cigarettes that represent smoking deaths.
His color choices also show thought. Prison Uniforms is constructed entirely of bright orange uniforms, though many if not most prisons use blue ones. This may be because orange is so much more of a vibrant and shocking color. His Oil Barrels shows an Earth-like rust pattern surrounded by ominous black barrels, all pointed inward.
Chris Jordan’s “Running the Numbers” exhibit provides a look into American culture through an interesting avenue, the sheer volume of our consumption. While it may not cause anyone to change their habits or start a local recycling campaign, it provokes thought and reflection, and does so through pieces that are unique and often darkly beautiful.
