SANTA FE, NM.- David Richard Gallery inaugurated its new DR Projects Space with an exhibition of three impressively talented Santa Feans: Chris Collins, Tim Cox and Jack R. Slentz. Each evinces a fascination and deep understanding of materials, natural and man-made, and an ability to transform them into something fresh and unexpected. These artists and their resultant works are like the original materials and objects – ready to emerge into the light.
The exhibition “Industrial Strength Santa Fe” is be presented January 15 through February 20, 2016.
Chris Collins finds inspiration in the expansive desert wastes surrounding Santa Fe. Sounds romantic, doesn’t it? Well, as they say in New York, ‘fuhgeddaboutit.’ Collins scours the landscape for the detritus that people donate to the environment: tin cans, cartridge boxes, oil drums, signs, automobile parts, and other flotsam and jetsam. Burnished by the elements and ‘transformed’ by the desire to shoot at things, Collins rescues these cast-off objects for a higher purpose. With a sculptor’s eye he identifies an underlying aesthetic and while respecting nature’s patination, begins to introduce his own hand through the application of gold, silver and copper leaf. The resultant works possess a glow that appears to shine from within – a sardine tin becomes a gold ingot and a discarded sheet of iron roofing is transformed into a free-floating abstract composition. Barrel hoops, cast loose from the staves that have long since disappeared into the desert soil, turn into gestural arabesques suspended in space. There is quite a bit of alchemy in the process.
Industrial strength in miniature springs forth in Tim Cox’ accurate, but raw, aluminum casts of dumpsters, laundry carts and construction containers. The reduction in scale permits an appreciation of the abstract geometry of everyday things one tends to give little thought to. As the Bauhaus long ago demonstrated there is beauty and purity to be found in utilitarian objects. Unlike the polish required by these early modernist designers, Cox leaves all of the casting flaws, core material and rough edges. This moves these works away from being maquettes or toy models to sculptural objects that have a real weight and power belying their small scale.
A similar interest and respect for ‘heavy metal’ is seen in the paintings. Rolled aluminum panels have a thin wash of pigment, thus allowing the support material to remain visible. The machinery and tool imagery imposed upon these surfaces reinforces both the industrial look and geometry.
Skill and serendipity are the hallmarks of Jack R. Slentz. Perhaps best known for his wooden sculpture, where single green hardwood blocks are chosen for their color, grain and imperfections. A violent tool like a chainsaw is used with scalpel precision and as the green wood dries, unplanned, but hoped for, changes occur as the grain shifts and cracks appear. A new and visually different body of work, the fetish-like forms of rubber, steel and occasionally wood, continues the combination of the expected and unexpected. Rubber inner tubes are introduced into the hand-forged steel armatures, manacles and wooden sculptural supports and then inflated. The resultant shapes suggest the exaggerated biomorphic human form constrained and straining against the bondage of metal and wood. Slentz’ curiousity of how materials perform and transform when put to other purposes are evidenced by his use of ‘virgin’ reflective sign material, cut and reshaped into three-dimensional forms bound with hog rings. The deep penetrating colors literally radiate into space.
