Christopher Martin’s
Order of Chaos (2023) operates as both poem and portal — a rhythmic meditation on paradox, language, and the fragile architecture of perception. The work features a tall, curved scroll pierced by a single black arrow, upon which a sequence of charged words cascades vertically:
“UNCERTAINTY
INSTABILITY
DIVIANCE
ENTROPY
ENIGMA
CHAOS
RUPTURE
NOWHERE
ELSEWHERE
SOMEWHERE
IRREVERSIBLE”
The piece invites the viewer to read downwards as though descending into a psychological or cosmological spiral — from confusion toward comprehension, or perhaps from comprehension toward release. The arrow, frozen mid-penetration, becomes both instrument of disruption and axis of order, pinning the chaos in place.
Visually, Martin uses his signature black-on-white aesthetic to evoke stark immediacy while maintaining poetic ambiguity. The clean typographic lines stand in contrast to the implied disorder of the words themselves. Each term, handwritten with subtle imperfections, carries the rhythm of thought — repetition as mantra, fracture as form.
Conceptually, Order of Chaos examines the delicate balance between control and collapse. Martin suggests that what we call “order” is merely a temporary stillness within infinite flux. By arranging language — the very tool we use to rationalize the world — into a ladder of instability, he reveals the futility and beauty of that effort.
Ultimately, the work reflects Martin’s ongoing inquiry into metaphysics and consciousness. Order of Chaos functions not as a statement but as a state — a space where language dissolves, and the viewer is left suspended between sense and surrender. Through its tension of text and gesture, it reminds us that chaos and order are not opposites but reflections, each defining and sustaining the other.
