>>PREVIEW
SOUTH OF HEAVEN
Runs until March 31
David Poolman
Stride Gallery
Metal spills over with grotesque detail, and a flip through any serious collection of metal records reveals cover art dense with skulls, pools of blood, piles of bones and the heads of dead babies. By contrast, David Poolman's South of Heaven is a clean and seductively slick exhibition, with a distinct lack of netherworld beasts running around.
The drawings in "from the womb to the tomb" are gorgeous, pristine text drawings, with one or two words suspended amidst the white space of the paper. The images lift text from tattoos of death metal fans, worked hard with a pencil to accumulate a shiny graphite surface. If it weren't for the words – EVIL, Brother of Metal, 666 and Slayer among them – these could easily hang framed in some anonymous corporate lobby. Ironically enough, the phrase "from the womb to the tomb" appears in death metal and religious pro-life writings alike. While "FTW" or "God hates us all" are hardly the inspirational buzzwords of the MBA-set, their endless repetition by hordes of metal gods verges on a similar rhetorical lull. And if you don't know what FTW means, the references to various aspects of metal culture might not strike a chord.
In addition to quoting Slayer, the show dredges up more esoteric bits that metalheads will recognize from the extensive book Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground and documentary film Metal: A Headbanger's Journey. These recent subcultural forays look at metal culture with an anthropological fascination, and the three paintings in Poolman's "the nauvoo suite" also delve deeper into this infamous history. The crude-ishly painted images reference the particularly dark tale of a Norwegian church believed to have been set alight by ultimate metal-badass Varg Vickernes (AKA Burzum), but make few interpretations on how this fiery incident sparked musical lore and copy-catting among black metal enthusiasts.
The show is yet another reminder of the elaborate mechanisms that exist for men to express aggression, indifference and outright disgust towards mainstream society. Like practically every metal record, this is a world where women – with the exception of notable cross-genre warrior-babes such as Girlschool, Wendy O. Williams, Angela Gossow of Arch Enemy and director Penelope Spheeris, among others – are further on the margins than even metal itself.
The South of Heaven drawings and the 13 videos on view in Stride's project room are explicit signposts for the maleness of this subculture. These works cull images and excerpts from death metal diaries posted on websites like www.opendiary.com that document the holy trinity of urban alienation, adolescent loneliness and desperate desire for belonging. A diary entry of some young metal brat scrolls across the luminous projection in sans-serif lettering. The short excerpts are alternately hilarious, pathetic and insightful. One provides a hilariously reticent spin on Republican politics, thirst for oil and support of the religious right. "God can afford the electric bills, because he's friends with the President of the United States of America, so he doesn't have to pay for gas." Others are pointedly anti-establishment: "These motherfuckers expect me to go five days without working and then come in for 8 hours and give 100 per cent. Fuck that," or just plain defeated: "You don't have a disorder if you're sad. You're just sad."
Poolman is obviously interested and well schooled in metal and its surrounding cultures, and South of Heaven is an artistically coherent body of work that hovers somewhere between homage and documentary. While the three series focus largely on metal musicians and fans, the stark, contrasting drawings, drab paintings and diary excerpts erase all but the smallest trace of these individuals and the mass of visual detail that's so characteristic of the metal esthetic. Symbols intended to be marks of fierce individuality and defiance – tattoos, acts of arson and menacing rants among them – are also images that have come to signify allegiance to the metal herd.
Upon seeing metal spit-shined and cleaned up for a contemporary art audience, South of Heaven may leave metallers with even a passing interest in the genre wondering, ‘would Lemmy still be the same without all of his moles?’ |
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