CRITICAL REFLECTION
Arthur Drooker: Heavy Metal
Patina Gallery 131 West Palace Avenue, Santa Fe
PATINA IS ONE OF SANTA FE’S MOST BEAUTIFUL GALLERIES. THE TIN CEILING alone is a stunner, and the space feels
content is, however, a little more gritty than
Heavy Metal, also the title of
world supply, no doubt, melted down
spacious without being crowded, which
the gorgeous gardens of Giverny. Stacks of
Drooker’s most recent book, holds
and recast or refabricated at least once
can sometimes be a challenge for a gallery
crushed automobiles, exhaust manifolds,
meaningful content in terms of issues
or multiple times since last being used
in the center of a tourist town. It was
massive cogs, and much metal detritus fills
of
to depict a Titus or Trajan type riding his
in the well-appointed, picture-perfect
the entirety of the visual field in most of
extraction
while
best pony. The yearly addition of raw ore
Patina that I discovered that certain
the pictures. In one case the rusting body
having a ubiquitously abstract look due
to world metal caches is minimal. Most
state-of-the-art lighting systems will in
of an old pickup from the forties—one
to Drooker’s aforementioned pushing
of the metals that humans work has
fact cause me to uncontrollably salivate.
with all the super-nice curves—appears
of horizonless imagery to the edges, and
been handled for centuries, so facilities
Recently under the spotlights, among
with the single word SAVE chalked on
carrying this forward through eschewing
like Schnitzer Steel have existed on
many other fascinating art, jewelry,
it, set against a massive towering sea of
traditional photo framing. The prints,
smaller scales for thousands of years, but
and sculptural objects, were photo-
autos crushed forever, damned to having
presented under glass, sans mats, in
ratcheting up to industrial scale creates
based images from the latest series by
their forms lost for all eternity. Who was
simple, thick, white frames, have an
all sorts of sea changes.
American photographer Arthur Drooker
the scrap-yard Yahweh that reached
elegant, almost sculptural presence that
Drooker’s lens tends to be that
documenting the repurposing of scrap
out and fingered this particular piece of
encourages abstract readings as the
of a documentarian, as self-proclaimed
metal at Schnitzer Steel’s mammoth
curvilicious steel for reuse rather than
hyper-realist imagery morphs into pure
“urban explorer.” The sheer scale of his
recycling facility in Oakland, California.
recycling? We may never know. Beautifully
visual texture and back again.
subject here, the mountainous refuse
planet-wide and
material
resource
management,
Drooker employs a horizonless
toned and full of rich, sharp detail, this is
The endlessly transforming life of
and reuse of resource, stands as a
format pioneered in European painting by
not exactly Michelangelo’s Last Judgment
metals is clearly evoked. Where is the
symbol for the ponderously threatening
Monet’s Waterlilies, in which the visual field
or Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa, but an
copper and tin today that once made up
weight of everything that the world’s
is filled top to bottom and side to side with
amusing, seemingly serendipitous play
hundreds of Roman imperial equestrian
most materialistic imperialist society has
the depicted subject matter. Drooker’s
on both.
bronzes, for example? Somewhere in the
evolved—the weight of everything that is too big to fail, jail, or flail. The weight of endless and bigger bank warfare is evoked as metals have a primary role in weaponry, historically and today. The Deleuzian concept of the artist creating the war machine is especially instructive in this regard. The price of military steel is not just measured in billions of dollars, clearly, but the photographic presence of such quantities implies their economic worth and the longstanding connection of metals to wealth. And the longstanding connections of wealth to social oppression and abusive hierarchies through metallic might. In Drooker’s hands, the engine that is Schnitzer Steel is used to process as many rich metaphors as it does disposable, fossilfueled vehicles. Like walls of sound thrown up by a bank of electric guitars in the musical genre his exhibition title alludes to, these images also become pure and impenetrable boundaries of sight and vision. Please try not to lick the lights. —Jon Carver
Arthur Drooker, Save, digital pigment print, 20” x 30”, 2014
d e c e MBER / j a n u a r y
2015-16
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