MICHAEL SCHULTZ
Gallery
Belgium Ammonia Plant #3739, limited edition color photograph, 30″x 40″
In the series Industrial Remnants, artist Michael Schultz has created large-scale photographs of huge abandoned factories and machinery in the United States and Europe. Not so long ago, these factories and machines were the heartbeat of the industrial age. They hummed, clanged, blasted and smoked, fueled by human labor and the urgency of progress. Constructed as beautiful functional architecture, they were hubs of heroic feats of engineering and manufacturing.
In the photographs of Michael Schultz, these Industrial Remnants appear as a heightened reality transformed by the beauty of decay and ruin. Schultz shows us beautiful ghosts, deserted industrial cathedrals, slowly being transformed by man’s neglect and reclaimed by nature’s abundant life.
Michael Schultz was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in 2010 and an Arkansas Arts Council 2010 Individual Artist Fellowship. In addition to his fine art photography, he continues to work on an ongoing project of photographing large industrial iron and steel foundries across the globe.
Schultz seeks to honor the work of an industry that is generally hidden, difficult to access and yet vital to the global economy. It is his hope to show a commonality of labor and history that cuts across all geopolitical barriers to reveal a sense of shared humanity.
The photographs of Michael Schultz are held in the public collections of the Guggenheim Foundation, NY; the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO; The Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia, MO; North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh; Dayton Museum of Art, OH and others.