Most environmentalists try to shock an apathetic public into action with the grotesque: a coal plant belching out black smoke over a playground, a city dump shimmering in its own wasted heat, anything that will demonstrate the repulsive consequences of our day-to-day behavior.

Activist and artist Chris Jordan approaches this same challenge with a different weapon: beauty. Standing in the middle of the Allen Memorial Art Museum’s Ellen Johnson gallery, the huge, glossy digital prints in his show, Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait, come off as strikingly beautiful.

Stepping closer, however, reveals a deeper, horrifying truth. The delicate spiderwebs in Jet Trails are really the exhaust of thousands of commercial jets. The shady, mysterious forest in Paper Bags consists of the supermarket bags those trees have become. A rendition of Georges-Pierre Seurat’s iconic A Sunday on La Grande Jatte becomes a critique of our national soda addiction — each cell in the pointillism is a different canned beverage.

A quote from the artist near the gallery’s entrance reads, “Beauty is a powerfully effective tool for drawing viewers into uncomfortable territory.”   

Jordan’s work both literally and figuratively pulls the viewer into this “uncomfortable territory” by luring them closer to examine a particular piece, wondering, “What will this one be made out of?” and also by using familiar objects in excess to remind the individual of his or her role in this quagmire of consumerism.

In Plastic Bottles, which depicts the two million beverage bottles used in the U.S. every five minutes, he skillfully creates the illusion of distance. While bottles in the foreground are large, colorful and painfully recognizable, the background fades into a blur — a gruesome landscape as far as the eye can see. This is much more effective than some works, namely Paper Cups and Plastic Bags, which are presented as flat.

Not content to be defined as an “environmental artist,” Jordan tackles other subjects as well, all relating to the theme of excess. In Ben Franklin, the 125,000 one-hundred dollar bills the U.S. spends every hour on the war in Iraq join together to make up the founding father’s face. What comes off as a wise facial expression on hard cash changes when blown up to eight-by-ten feet. The thinly pursed lips and sad, heavy eyes on this particular opponent of war and imperialism speak distinctly of disapproval.

In these and his other prints, Jordan confronts the viewer with a stark, visual incarnation of the statistics the public routinely brushes aside. While speaking to various environmental studies classes on campus this week, he mentioned the hate mail he has received accusing him of exaggeration. “No one accuses a statistic of exaggerating,” he said.  “Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing. Visuals are more difficult to swallow.”

Running the Numbers will run at the AMAM until June 8.