God Buys Used: Redeeming Grace in Junk-Based Art

Recently, the social media world became acquainted with artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster, thanks to an article detailing their inimitable work. The duo constructs art installations out of garbage, scrap metal, and even taxidermy animals—nonsensical globules of repulsive debris.

But when a single light is projected onto these piles, the resulting shadows reveal something unexpected: human silhouettes. These projections are self-portraits of the artists, depicted in various poses—relaxed, grieved, grotesque, and sometimes obscene. The lithe forms of these shadows contradict the chaos of the abstract sculptures. Trash that seemed to be strewn randomly was actually placed with precision and care. The effect is as jarring as it is engaging.

Reactions to these pieces range from the astonished—“This is incredible; I’m in awe,”—to the skeptical—“These are obviously Photoshopped,”—to the speculative—“I bet those smell terrible!” Jeffrey Deitch, director of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, writes of one of their pieces:

Dirty White Trash (with Gulls) is a confluence of beauty and filth, form and anti-form. It is … an embodiment of formalist logic. At the same time, it is a negation of everything that formalism stands for…. The artist is at the center of the work. It is deliberately entertaining, and revels in its own theatricality.

Their art installations are vivid depictions of the creative process. Typically, artists take an undeveloped medium (a palate of paint, a lump of clay, a block of marble) and cultivate it into a new form, depleting the medium in the process. Noble and Webster are doing the same thing, but they have preserved the relationship between the chaotic medium and the final form, frozen in time. Both exist simultaneously, in a paradoxical relationship.

And the specific medium used isn’t as random as it seems—far from it. They created British Wildlife after the death of Noble’s father, utilizing 88 taxidermy animals taken from his father’s house to produce a silhouette of the artists in lament. It’s a dirge, a memorial, composed of his father’s morbid collection. Dirty White Trash (with Gulls) was produced using every piece of garbage the artists produced in the six months it took to create the piece—the sum total of what was necessary to live while constructing the instillation.

There’s an uncanny similarity between Noble and Webster’s work and God’s artistic process. Like them, he creates beauty out of the wretched, the discarded, and the dead. He brings order out of chaos, placing every scrap of junk “just so,” until it reflects something beautiful: his own self-portrait. But why the junk? If God wants to display his image to the world, why doesn’t he use a Godly medium? What’s so important about the relationship between the abstract mess and the projected image? The answer can be found on a used car lot.

One Man’s Trash…

As God winds his way through the terrestrial car dealership, looking over each vehicle with a buyer’s eye, he always seems to choose the clunkers. Upon close inspection, many of our biblical heroes look like characters you’d find in a police lineup: sleazy prostitutes, swindling tax collectors, stuttering murderers, stinking shepherds, and a dogmatically cruel Pharisee. Not exactly the raw material you’d expect the Almighty to use in a self-portrait.

While humans must rely on preexisting materials in the creative process, God creates ex nihilo, out of nothing. Yet the biblical creation account shows God first creating a chaotic medium, slowly and deliberately pulling order out of that chaos—separating light from darkness, day from night, land from sea. When he creates humanity, he does so as a potter, sculpting from the dust. But God wasn’t finished with creation after the first six days. He rested on the seventh, and then went right back to work. He’s still taking the dust and grime of the world and crafting life from it.

Perhaps, like Noble and Webster, God revels in theatricality. Nothing says more about a master craftsman than his work. Whose expertise do you respect more: the pretentious motorist with driving gloves on the wheel, scarf in the air, and hair waxed to match the sheen of his convertible? Or the scrupulous mechanic who takes a rusted out jalopy, brings it back to life, and then takes it out for a joyride? God takes pride in proving that even the lowest of the low can be redeemed.

But there’s a second reason God is in the restoration business: he was the original manufacturer. It pains him to see his good creations in such disarray. So he pays the required fee and tows them back to his shop, one by one. He pours his love back into his creations by rolling up his sleeves, scraping around on his hands and knees, and bringing them back to working order—even if the process covers him in grease. God’s primary interest in us is not utilitarian. If all he wanted was to get from point A to point B, he’d get a sleek, new Jaguar. The most important component in redemption is not utility; it’s love.

Self-portrait in Grunge

Whether we realize it or not, each of us reflects God’s silhouette. We were created in his image, and even when our lives are twisted into something incomprehensible, the image remains. The Son became incarnate and met us in the muck. He sent his Spirit to begin the arduous task of curing our maladies.

Too often, life feels like one of Noble and Webster’s installations, but with the light turned off. We can only see a chaotic mess. But God uses just that type of mess to reveal himself to the world. He sees us from a different perspective, a Godly vantage point. Even when our lives seem aimless, God has intentionally selected each of us for the noblest of purposes. We are God’s living, breathing self-portrait, flawed as we are.

photo credit: happyfamousartists via photopin cc