The sculptures of Eric Dietz look like machinery. He calls them “failed prototypes.”
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In art school at Northern Illinois University, Dietz started reading about the work of Mark Pauline and his San Francisco-based Survival Research Laboratories. “They just take machines and subvert what they’re made for,” he says. “Their machines spit fire. In a half-hour show they wage a battle and destroy themselves.” (One critic described a Pauline show as “a rusty carnival in hell.”) By the time Dietz’s sculpture instructor took the class to a junkyard, he was ready. “I went insane. Everyone else got 10 or 20 pounds, and I ended up with 180 pounds.” He found a thresher blade, spikes, and steel pipes, and he made a metal piece five feet long, fitted with blades and a pitchfork, that rocked back and forth like a farm implement gone mad.
Each work in Dietz’s show is titled with a year from a different decade, representing “what was going on then, at least to me.” He says his “12 years of Catholic school probably explains a lot,” such as 1907–(Stigmatamatic), which has “a turn-of-the-century poor box look to it” and requires a coin to operate. You place your arm in a slot, and after a slight sting a spot of red food coloring appears on the center of your palm. “Religious imagery is fascinating to me–the burning bush, the shroud of Turin, really unexplained kinds of things,” he says. “I wanted an undercurrent of, could this be in a church? Would this be another way for the church to make money, charging for miracles?
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo by Nathan Mandell/ “1907-(Stigmatagmatic)”.
