Chaos out of Order is a meditative exploration of the human impulse to collect, sort, arrange, and display. At its core, the work reflects on processes more commonly aligned to archaeology, where fragments of the past are painstakingly organized to reveal narratives of human progress and technological evolution. Traditionally, archaeologists study stone tools to understand early human behavior and innovation, but here, the stones transcend their utilitarian histories.
In these pieces, attention shifts from function to form — to the subtle variations in color, shape, and texture that make each stone unique while also part of a greater whole. By carefully arranging these natural objects in rows upon a wooden board, set against the woven backdrop of tatami, the composition echoes the structures of archaeological digs, museum displays, and taxonomic systems.
The title, Chaos out of Order, serves as a deliberate inversion of the masonic axiom Ordo Ab Chao (“Order out of Chaos”). Rather than suggesting progress or enlightenment through imposed structure, this work questions whether our compulsive ordering merely reshuffles chaos into new configurations. The result is a visual tautology — a cycle where the desire for order is revealed as both a comfort and a constraint.
In this tension, the stones become more than objects: they are symbols of the dual human drive to classify and to be free, to impose meaning and to let things simply be.
morgan veness 