The New Industrial Parks near Irvine, California
Photographs by Lewis Baltz
South corner, Riccar America Company, 3184 Pullman, Costa Mesa, 1974. PH2001:0150
South corner, parking area, 23831 El Toro Road, El Toro, 1974. PH2001:0139
South wall, PlastX, 350 Lear, Costa Mesa, 1974. PH2001:0144
North wall, Automated Marine International, 1641 McGaw, Irvine, 1974. PH2001:0154
West wall, Semicoa, 333 McCormick, Costa Mesa, 1974. PH2001:0177
South wall, Mazda Motors, 2121 East Main Street, Irvine, 1974. PH2001:0178
Southwest wall, Ware, Malcolm and Garner, 16722 Hale, Irvine, 1974. PH2001:0181
The New Industrial Parks is part of a monographic series developed in the 1970s (The Tract Houses, Maryland, Nevada and Park City) wherein the artist Lewis Baltz deals with wide-ranging cultural and philosophical questions about industrial zones in the urban landscape. By focusing his attention on the familiar, Baltz created a powerful work in his critical photographic approach to the built environment.
Under the harsh light of a rectilinear universe full of the closed doors and enigmatic façades of the new industrial parks, the artist gives life to surfaces and textures, captures both the opaque and the transparent, and seems to project, beyond the deceptively banal frontal views, the buildings’ entire life cycle. This tension between the difficulty of the subject and the formal beauty of the resulting images gives the work its visual power.
