Inde-Picks (Independent
Curator's Selection)
David
Pirrie's carefully rendered remains of vehicular accidents, in pencil on
vellum, over laid with a grid and presented as art resonate with
psychological and cultural implications. The motor vehicle is an icon that
signifies positive as well as negative traits. The automobile is a symbol of
wealth, status, style and even sexiness. Right down to the utilitarian
vehicles for transportation - the eighteen-wheeler for example has become a
pop trope, inspiring songs, literature, art and even looking like art with
graphic, chrome and illuminated accessorizing. The motor vehicle is a
necessity, a habit of convenience and a privilege. Yet it has also created
immense repercussions on the environment and the need for oil has America at
war with Iraq.
The extension of the image of the automobile into wreckage - the dead body
of all that the automotive industry has come to stand for - has a metonymic
meaning. David Pirrie's drawings reduce the bulky, twisted steel and rubber
carcass to a comprehensible size. It is comparable to a small crucifix, a
reminder of mortality and hence a prompt from which to formulate living.
This sense of life's transience is especially poignant in the crumpled bus.
It is empty and has been abandoned, for it is not only useless in it's
vehicular capacity, but it also was the container of lives that were lost as
it transformed from a transportation for people to a smashed death trap. The
viewer is, after all, still amongst the living, examining the tiny depiction
of the remains of an accident that happened outside of his immediate ken. It
has no identity other than a culturally pervasive, violent possibility of
how death can occur. The drawings are remarkable examples of the ability to
resurrect, from an image associated with death, a conceptual awe at man's
trajectory from his discovery of the wheel to this contemporary, conceptual
translation of where it has led him. This work speaks of the pity of
progress, the fragility of human accomplishments and yet the sophistication
of the overview of Pirrie's analysis grants a divine perspective on our
condition.
Picture the artist, David Pirrie, looking at the photographs of the wrecked
vehicles, carefully drawing them, paying them attention, with a modeling
that caresses the images. The work becomes distanced, divided into little
squares with a weak yellow grid and then it passes from his hand and is
brought out to be examined.
Copyright © 2006, Julie Oakes
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