An American Portrait

Art and social commentary have always been kissing cousins. In a sense, all art is social commentary, as it reflects artists’ views of the world they inhabit. Whether that reflection is viewed in a straight mirror or distorted like a fun-house mirror is the choice of the artist.

In Running the Numbers: An American Portrait, Chris Jordan set out to “look at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics.” Each large image represents a specific statistic in visual format: one depicts fifteen million sheets of office paper, representing five minutes of paper usage in America. The stacks of paper tower and wobble like something out of Dr. Seuss’ nightmares.

The artist’s hope is that the visual impact of “seeing” these statistics will make the way we live and the vast, ever-increasing complexity of American society accessible to individuals. His thought is that the enormous numbers in most statistics are incomprehensible. What, exactly, does 3.6 million SUV sales a year look like? Our brains can’t fathom it; the numbers are too large. But a picture created out of all the Denali nameplates sold in a year, arranged in pointillist fashion to recreate the peaceful mountain scene used in Denali commercials, has an impact. Looking at each individual name plate, you are struck by the enormity of that number in a way that simply reading it can’t accomplish. The piece is titled “Denali Denial,” in an extension of that social commentary. If everyone drove such a vehicle, there would be no more peaceful mountain scenes of crisp air and fresh water.

My favorite piece of the exhibition is called “Painkillers.” In it, 213,000 Vicodin pills swirl around a center point, a maelstrom of small, white ovoid shapes. It’s like they’re circling the drain, about to go the through the tubes and hit rock bottom. And at the same time, it’s like being high, unable to control what’s going on and letting it all just swirl around you, content to be passive. The number of pills in the composition is equal to the number of emergency room visits every year related to the abuse or misuse of prescription painkillers.

Running the Numbers: An American Portrait opened at the UWM Union Art Gallery on November 15, 2007 and will run through December 14, 2007. The gallery’s hours and upcoming events can be found on its website, http://www.aux.uwm.edu/Union/events/gallery/.