Santa Fe Depot is for this viewer, let’s just say, extremely boring, complacent, stagnant, and unimaginable taking up a whole lot of dynamic space that any number of artists –even local San Diego artists- could have transformed into a thing of beauty. Man, what was everyone thinking? Go see for yourself, you’ll find six blocks of forged weatherproof steel each having the exact dimensions of 52” x 58” x 64” and each weighing 25 tons.
Not that it matters or that you could tell unless you were that concerned as to what these blocks were doing here in the first place. Curiosity is not one of the reactions the sculpture incites within oneself when experiencing this installation as its mere presence seems almost apologetic, almost embarrassed for taking up too much space, over compensating in a very non-clever way, the concept has been drained out of the conceptualization, it is merely ballast for a very unsteady mission and journey.
Unfortunately that journey ended here in San Diego no matter how much the artist wants us to “think” about these blocks. Robert Pincus the art critic for the San Diego Union Tribune writes in his article, “welding and carving aren't part of Serra's sculptural vocabulary. The block arrives straight from the foundry. The reality of their making matters. What you see matches what you get. This is part of the conceptual integrity of his art. As massive as Serra's sculptures are, they're ignited by concept. But they're just as concerned with how you experience them. He relishes the way these blocks, placed as they are, provoke a potential viewer to wonder: What are they doing here? How do I look at them? How do they relate to this site?” Trust me, people aren’t going to ponder these blocks in this way because it is exactly the reason why they don’t relate is that they don’t relate to people’s very complicated, ambitious, multi-tasking, internet connected, cell phone ringing, Hummer driving, WalMart shopping, American Idol lives that need constant stimulation and entertainment.
Santa Fe Depot does not entertain, it is not necessarily the fault of the work but there is nothing the least bit poetic or melodic in this work to sooth the savage beast in all of us. It does nothing to slow us down or intrigue us and no amount of “arrangement in two axes, mirroring the idea that there are train tracks running both directions” or that “each block is aligned and turned differently, so looking down the row creates a rising and falling set of rectangles and planes” is going to make it better. There is simply no room under this arcade with matching inlaid bricks of the same color underneath, that do nothing more than absorb these forms into the ground instead of projecting them upward, levitating them in some magical act of weightlessness, defying gravity and floating effortlessly like two barges passing in the night. Please don’t be fooled, these pieces cannot support the artistic weight or local history they must bear. There is simply no room in this setting for minimalist, post-minimalist or post post minimalist work as there is no room in our lives for something that is not treacherous, deadly, chaotic, and foreseeable.
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