A seemingly simple premise... turning statistic abstractions into photographs. But incomprehensible figures that seem impossible to elucidate? That's what Chris Jordan does. He makes the invisible, unimaginable figures into visual messages that pull at our consciousness.
In some ways, ignorance is bliss. To read statistics or hear them on the radio allows for dismissal of their significance, an apathetic yawn perhaps. "How can I wrap my mind around those numbers?", we ask ourselves. So we go blank, and glaze over. But, in the back of our mind we worry that those figures are something to reckon with, that they might eventually catch up with us.
Chris Jordan started his journey in art photography appreciating trash. In hot pursuit of color and form, he traveled through dump sites jumping over fences with an 8x10 camera when no-one was around. In conversation with friends, his work read of more than color and form. Based on an image of a massive garbage pile a conversation formed around consumerism. He listened intently and realized here was something he could pursue that tied into his concerns. Enlightened, he was off shooting with a goal to entice such thoughts from viewers.
But it didn't stop at the piles of tires, bottles and discarded cell phones- it continued in every direction, with air jet streams and prison inmate uniforms and uninsured children. Imagine 9 million uninsured children which is the American tally for 2007... Now look at an endless array of 9 million toys piled up filling gallery walls from top to bottom. Now get closer and really see them and let your mind wander to the personal for a moment, a child in your own life perhaps. It's an intellectual game, and from a distance it's even an abstraction ironically like the statistics. However, one is enticed to come a little closer by the sheer beauty of the images. And then a little closer yet. The personal, aesthetic and political merge.
Here we are, one person in a sea of people.
Here's this representation- one prison uniform in a 10 foot panel of 2.3 million folded prison uniforms representing one year of America's incarceration rate, the highest in the world. And then we back up again, feeling a bit ashamed, and reemerge into the abstraction of the sea of blended forms.
M.V.
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2 comments:
Image is wonderful. Like a colorful Pollock.
Now that the USA world is in a throw away system, meaning don't fix it; throw it away, then buy new, the body of work set forth by artist Chris Jordan is clearly a reminder of the selfish needs of the sobs of the world. Granted the colors in the body of work show aesthetic faculties. Although in my mind I wounder how can the general public view our waste with open eyes, in any format, when we don't want any part of clean up no matter the involvement?
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