Running on Nothing

On the fourth of February, 2009, I learned many new facts about the world. I found out how many U.S. citizens were incarcerated in 2005, I saw that 38,000 shipping containers are sent through U.S. ports every twelve hours, and I discovered exactly why Chris Jordan’s “Running the Numbers” exhibit left my artistic cravings so unsatisfied.

Jordan’s pieces fall into three categories. “Skull with Cigarette, 2008,” depicts the upper portion of a skeleton smoking a lit cigarette; the picture is composed of 200,000 miniscule cigarette packs of varying shades. In this category, a lot of small items make up a larger picture. In “Prison Uniforms, 2007,” 2.3 million folded uniforms are stacked one on top of the other. All the uniforms are almost exactly the same, and when viewed from afar, the work looks like just six brown panels of wood. This category contains works in which a lot of small items are put together without forming a larger picture. The third category, works which include no statistics, contains only the two portraits of loading docks included at the front of the exhibit.

The pieces Jordan selected to include in this exhibit are just inconsistent enough to seem unplanned. He made a larger visual representation with the cigarette packs, as he did with the Denali Denial stickers (2006) and the Ben Franklin one-hundred dollar bills (2007), but he did not create a larger image with the prison uniforms or the shipping containers (2007). There does not seem to be a noticeable difference in message between these works—each category contains statistics regarding consumerism, with no distinct variation between groups. Yet, some form a larger picture and others do not; this suggests inconsistency on the artist’s behalf.

The works in the third category, portraits not composed of smaller images, seemed almost thrown in the exhibit on a whim—they fit into the consumerism theme, but stylistically they do not jive. All in all, the exhibit does not seem particularly well-planned. Jordan gives the impression of simply finding a statistic and making a picture to go with it. This detracts from the artistic quality of the work by making it seem altogether too crafted; rather than creating an artwork for the sake of creating an artwork, Jordan is mass-producing portrayals of American consumerism with only sporadic artistic inspiration, in much the same irrelevant and wasteful way which he attempts to criticize.

Though Jordan’s artwork is very creative, imaginative, and original, I find it less than up to par artistically speaking. He took the idea of turning dull statistics into interesting art and ran with it, with generally pleasing results. However, without the adjacent plaque listing off a shocking fact about jet trails or plastic cups, the picture itself is often less-than-engaging. If Jordan presented “Shipping Containers, 2007,” without the statistic to guide the viewer, it would just be a lot of small, colorful squares. As mentioned above, “Prison Uniforms, 2007,” looks more like six panels of wood than a representation of incarceration. Without the surprising statistic and its inherent message of consumerism, some of the pieces themselves aren’t all that fantastic.

“Running the Numbers” is a fascinating and visually appealing exhibit, but the art aspect really only kicks in when one views the pieces at a conceptual level (i.e. applying the statistic to the picture) than at a visual level (seeing a piece of art without an explanatory statistic). This hints at less-than-consistent artistry on Jordan’s part, and while it makes for an interesting and thought-provoking exhibit, his works are a little too contrived for my tastes.