Running the Numbers

Would I hang that on my wall?
A critical look at the exhibit “Running the Numbers” created by Chris Jordan
When one first walks into the Art Museum on the Washington State University campus and into the Chris Jordan exhibit “Running the Numbers,” that person is greeted by a large image of Mount Reiner. It is only when that person continues to move towards the image that they realize that it is not simple a photo of the mountain that many of us know so well, but in hundreds of shrunken pictures of shipping containers, the ones used to ship freight overseas. It is at this point that one begins to realize that there is more than meets the eye in this exhibit and thus brings me to the overarching concept of this review. From the very get go it is clear that the exhibit was designed or at some level intended to point out the glaring problems of America’s capitalist and consumerist culture. In this day and age, almost no American has any doubt in the existence of these two issues, and yes using an artistic medium to further show these issues in motions does have some merit. But at the same time, does the simple use of artistic styles make something art? And for that mater what does redundantly pointing our attention to issues that while we may not have known the numbers, the big picture is old news actually accomplish? The exhibit is something to behold. All of the images are very large, a technique shown very well by Roy Lichenstein as a great way to draw peoples attention. But when the whole exhibit bowls down, one is left with only their own feelings on the pieces. Kant states peoples individual tastes in art is purely “aesthetic …whose determining ground can be no other than subject” (98). For this critic one though repeatedly flashed through my mind as I wandered through Jordan’s art. Would I pay for this? Granted this is a very American and Worhol-esque approach to art and in no means the only means for determining the artistic value of a piece, none the less I feel that it is a very important factor to consider discussing the total value of a piece.
The first piece that I observed when walking through the exhibit was what at first glance appeared to be a series of intertwining pipes, something reminiscent of the old PC game Pipe Drain. I would like to believe that had the plaque on the wall not told me that the “pipes” were actually stacked plastic cups, specifically one million plastic cups the number used every hour on United States air lines, I would have been able to figure it out for myself. Sadly knowing myself, and the short amount of time we were able to view Jordan’s piece I am completely sure I would not have figured it out for myself before time ran out. The piece itself is very impressive. The amount of twisted and coiled lines make for a very tangled mess. The problem that I had with the piece is just what I said in the beginning of this paragraph, without the plaque, I would have had absolutely no idea what I was looking at. Despite that I felt that the piece itself was very visually appealing, and despite the fact that it was pointing out such a wasteful habit of Americans and that if I had the money and was in need of a large piece of art I would in fact consider trying to purchase the image.
Two other pieces that were on display at the museum contain completely different images but at the same time both contain a small feature that I found to very hard to swallow as someone critiquing art. Both images show consumer products namely Light bulbs and toothpicks and both of the images refer to the wasteful usages of their respective uses. The problem comes in the vagueness of the words that were chosen to describe the images. The light bulbs refer to the 300,000 kilowatt hours of inefficient energy use that happens every minute while the toothpicks symbolize the 100 million trees cut down to make paper for junk mail. The problem that I have as a critic is subjectivity of the words “inefficient” and “junk mail”. But to what standards is Chris Jordan holding those two words to? Does me leaving a light on when I am not home consist of inefficient use of energy? But what if I am doing that to deter a potential burglary? I feel that this subjectivity makes it almost impossibly to fully take the magnitude of the image into perspective because it relies solely on statistical information, which is commonly know to be skewed. One a solely aesthetic approach I would have no problem justifying the purchase of the works as they both contained a very beautiful image, but because of the plaque much of the value of the piece departed for me.
The final piece that I would like to talk about was an absolutely gigantic work consisting of thousands of tiny orange jumpsuits standing for all the person currently incarcerated in the United States. I will admit that I did not have time to walk right up to the work or to even read the plaque stating the exact number of jumpsuits, but as a criminal law and political science major I know to the point of Ad Nauseam, that this nation is plagued with a high crime rate and an even higher corrupt criminal justice system. It was not because of this work that I have decided to try and reform this system and I do not deny that an individual who observers it could be swayed to change their life to try and correct the systems short comings but on a purely aesthetic level I found the piece to be an extremely large eye sore. I am personally not a fan of the color orange so I found the piece very hard to look at.
Overall I found the exhibit to be a very interesting and subjectively aesthetic experience. But I found far too many problems with the concepts behind the works to say that I felt inclined to want to purchase any of the art. I felt that the images held profound messages about Americas consumerist system that I felt needed to change but I simply did not feel that Chris Jordan’s art was the way to go about causing the changes that I feel that he was trying to cause me to want to initiate. So while I feel that it may be a strong approach to looking at Chris Jordan’s work I feel that trying to understand if I would be willing to spend money on the work and thus hang it on my wall if a functional approach to comprehending Chris Jordan’s work.