The essay below appears in the catalog Robert Sulkin, Photographs 1973-2019, published by the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum of Hollins University. The occasion was a retrospective exhibition. The author is Genevieve Hendicks, Associate Professor of Art History, Hollins Unversity.
Vision/Revision
Genevieve Hendricks, PhD
An exploration of Robert Sulkin’s body of creatively conceived, complex, and carefully composed works reveals a world of surreal juxtapositions blending micro and macro, fact and fiction. His photographs provide fertile ground for the consideration of relationships in which the miniature becomes the gigantic, and constructions made of forgotten fragments attain the aura of treasured but fragmentary memories. A survey of his work provides a point of entry into a universe of cosmic junk, discarded souvenirs, and the fossilized remains of fantastic beasts. These form an extensive cabinet of curiosities, a world which can be visited in waking dreams, both created and discovered through the camera’s lens.
In the social landscapes Sulkin explored in the 1970s, one witnesses the emergence of themes that would continue to be developed over his artistic career. These include ruminations on space and the emptiness of space as witnessed in moments of public solitude or private reflection. This can be seen in July 4, Carrboro, NC, 1976, which captures a distinct moment in American history in a moment of stillness evoking the wider world beyond. In subsequent studies he explored with the immediacy of drawing in visually observant works wherein he began to experiment with scale and playfulness, two areas which would continue to inform his work. In Speeding Car, Chapel Hill of 1979 one witnesses a world in flux and decomposing as he explored the nature of photography, both conceptually and physically. In a certain sense, these images make temporality visible as the ephemerality of movement is captured.
In the 1980s, Sulkin’s laboratory of research moved to his studio, where he began constructing structures for the purpose of photographing them. This opened up a further world of discovery and play, containing universal references whose meanings are transformed through dreamlike juxtapositions. Man Ray al dente from 1986 slyly references the early 20th century photographer’s 1921 photograph The Gift, replacing a vertical row of tacks glued onto the underside of a flatiron with loops of spaghetti. This ludic appropriation of one of the photographer’s image of the Surrealist Object, wherein everyday items were rendered uncanny and baffling, reveals Sulkin’s deep study of artistic sources, which are not limited to photography but can be seen in references to Giorgio de Chirico, Marc Chagall, Mark Rothko, and Francis Bacon, among others. One encounters new worlds within his tightly controlled environments which revealed themselves to the artist once viewed through the camera, with film enabling the eye to see what it generally cannot.
These artistic allusions go hand in hand with the development of Sulkin’s alter-ego as a mad scientist, rummaging through junkyard heaps in search of cast-off objects which when combined and staged give way to new worlds of meanings. When photographed, these grungy gadgets, the products of an ambitious mind, reveal worlds unto themselves, and open up possibilities of space travel and exploration. The photographs of composite objects, seemingly non-functional machines similar in shape and appearance to abandoned Mars Rovers which emerge in the series entitled “Prototypes” recall early Modernists’ fascination with dysfunctional machines, as witnessed in the work of Paul Klee, Francis Picabia, and others. At the same time, they speak to the fiction of photography, as it is through the lens of the camera that the viewer is invited into the world of these constructed tableaux, to wonder at their veracity and/or purpose.
The imaginative leaps engendered by these stagings lead to imagined visions of space exploration itself as witnessed in the “Homage to Holst” series, created from scans of black walnuts, resulting in images which appear to contain galaxies replete with explosive solar events and references to space travel. Continuing the exploratory motifs of rocket-ships and space travel witnessed in the “Prototypes” series, these allusive images nudge the edges of traditional photography, through their attention to contour and texture. Moreover, his continued experimentation with digital manipulation in both positive and negative planes as well other forms of experimentation open up different types of experiences. In these imaginative leaps from micro to macro one finds universal references that are also intimate, as well as a continuation of the idea of the photograph as artifact, especially as witnessed through his reuse of lantern slides as framing devices, thus connecting these to the history of photography itself, and its perceived role as enabling the creation of artifacts of truth.
Deeply embedded in this history, and its at times fraught relationship to science, as well as a sense of time past the series of images entitled “Nobilis in Morte: Man and Beast” explores the tensions between the harsh realities of photography and the romanticism of genre. The “specimens” pictured here - trussed taxidermied birds, reptiles floating in jars of formaldehyde, or discarded assortments of bone - present a pseudoscientific recreation of a 19th century lab, replete with the beauty and history contained therein. The abandoned objects of scientific investigation are given new life in their constructed spaces, yet retain a sense of loss, and recalls Susan Sontag’s assertion that “All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.”[1]
This nostalgic tone is furthered in the series of “Odes,” wherein Sulkin plays with memory and its distortion, while referencing science and myth. In Ode to Aurras, dedicated to the goddess of sound, two images of a cymbal-wielding member of the Salvation Army Band are placed as if upon a double altar, replete with offerings of fruit which diametrically mirror the arm position of the uniformed band member. The continued project of re-animating found images and figures builds upon an earlier series, “Circa 20th century” from the early 1990s. In this series, Sulkin drew on the imagery of popular culture, charting the territory of mass media, marketing and subliminal messages by projecting slides taken from television shows on to folded paper.
In his most recent body of work, “The Malfunction of Memory,” Sulkin continues to explore these themes in combinations of image and text, creating a type of distorted rearview mirror looking back at history. In these works, one enters into the creation of imagined narratives, propelling the viewer into the disembodied experience of suffering from memory’s ability to separate primary experience from tv/multimedia. The modern refractions of these shadows demonstrate Sulkin’s continued project of finding life, beauty, and play in the mundane, the fantastic, and the forgotten.
Genevieve Hendricks is Assistant Professor of Art History
Hollins University
This essay appears in the catalog Robert Sulkin: Photographs 1973-2019
Eleanor D. Wilson Museum
Hollins University
[1] Susan Sontag, On Photography, Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, Ltd. 1977: 15.
Genevieve Hendricks, PhD
An exploration of Robert Sulkin’s body of creatively conceived, complex, and carefully composed works reveals a world of surreal juxtapositions blending micro and macro, fact and fiction. His photographs provide fertile ground for the consideration of relationships in which the miniature becomes the gigantic, and constructions made of forgotten fragments attain the aura of treasured but fragmentary memories. A survey of his work provides a point of entry into a universe of cosmic junk, discarded souvenirs, and the fossilized remains of fantastic beasts. These form an extensive cabinet of curiosities, a world which can be visited in waking dreams, both created and discovered through the camera’s lens.
In the social landscapes Sulkin explored in the 1970s, one witnesses the emergence of themes that would continue to be developed over his artistic career. These include ruminations on space and the emptiness of space as witnessed in moments of public solitude or private reflection. This can be seen in July 4, Carrboro, NC, 1976, which captures a distinct moment in American history in a moment of stillness evoking the wider world beyond. In subsequent studies he explored with the immediacy of drawing in visually observant works wherein he began to experiment with scale and playfulness, two areas which would continue to inform his work. In Speeding Car, Chapel Hill of 1979 one witnesses a world in flux and decomposing as he explored the nature of photography, both conceptually and physically. In a certain sense, these images make temporality visible as the ephemerality of movement is captured.
In the 1980s, Sulkin’s laboratory of research moved to his studio, where he began constructing structures for the purpose of photographing them. This opened up a further world of discovery and play, containing universal references whose meanings are transformed through dreamlike juxtapositions. Man Ray al dente from 1986 slyly references the early 20th century photographer’s 1921 photograph The Gift, replacing a vertical row of tacks glued onto the underside of a flatiron with loops of spaghetti. This ludic appropriation of one of the photographer’s image of the Surrealist Object, wherein everyday items were rendered uncanny and baffling, reveals Sulkin’s deep study of artistic sources, which are not limited to photography but can be seen in references to Giorgio de Chirico, Marc Chagall, Mark Rothko, and Francis Bacon, among others. One encounters new worlds within his tightly controlled environments which revealed themselves to the artist once viewed through the camera, with film enabling the eye to see what it generally cannot.
These artistic allusions go hand in hand with the development of Sulkin’s alter-ego as a mad scientist, rummaging through junkyard heaps in search of cast-off objects which when combined and staged give way to new worlds of meanings. When photographed, these grungy gadgets, the products of an ambitious mind, reveal worlds unto themselves, and open up possibilities of space travel and exploration. The photographs of composite objects, seemingly non-functional machines similar in shape and appearance to abandoned Mars Rovers which emerge in the series entitled “Prototypes” recall early Modernists’ fascination with dysfunctional machines, as witnessed in the work of Paul Klee, Francis Picabia, and others. At the same time, they speak to the fiction of photography, as it is through the lens of the camera that the viewer is invited into the world of these constructed tableaux, to wonder at their veracity and/or purpose.
The imaginative leaps engendered by these stagings lead to imagined visions of space exploration itself as witnessed in the “Homage to Holst” series, created from scans of black walnuts, resulting in images which appear to contain galaxies replete with explosive solar events and references to space travel. Continuing the exploratory motifs of rocket-ships and space travel witnessed in the “Prototypes” series, these allusive images nudge the edges of traditional photography, through their attention to contour and texture. Moreover, his continued experimentation with digital manipulation in both positive and negative planes as well other forms of experimentation open up different types of experiences. In these imaginative leaps from micro to macro one finds universal references that are also intimate, as well as a continuation of the idea of the photograph as artifact, especially as witnessed through his reuse of lantern slides as framing devices, thus connecting these to the history of photography itself, and its perceived role as enabling the creation of artifacts of truth.
Deeply embedded in this history, and its at times fraught relationship to science, as well as a sense of time past the series of images entitled “Nobilis in Morte: Man and Beast” explores the tensions between the harsh realities of photography and the romanticism of genre. The “specimens” pictured here - trussed taxidermied birds, reptiles floating in jars of formaldehyde, or discarded assortments of bone - present a pseudoscientific recreation of a 19th century lab, replete with the beauty and history contained therein. The abandoned objects of scientific investigation are given new life in their constructed spaces, yet retain a sense of loss, and recalls Susan Sontag’s assertion that “All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.”[1]
This nostalgic tone is furthered in the series of “Odes,” wherein Sulkin plays with memory and its distortion, while referencing science and myth. In Ode to Aurras, dedicated to the goddess of sound, two images of a cymbal-wielding member of the Salvation Army Band are placed as if upon a double altar, replete with offerings of fruit which diametrically mirror the arm position of the uniformed band member. The continued project of re-animating found images and figures builds upon an earlier series, “Circa 20th century” from the early 1990s. In this series, Sulkin drew on the imagery of popular culture, charting the territory of mass media, marketing and subliminal messages by projecting slides taken from television shows on to folded paper.
In his most recent body of work, “The Malfunction of Memory,” Sulkin continues to explore these themes in combinations of image and text, creating a type of distorted rearview mirror looking back at history. In these works, one enters into the creation of imagined narratives, propelling the viewer into the disembodied experience of suffering from memory’s ability to separate primary experience from tv/multimedia. The modern refractions of these shadows demonstrate Sulkin’s continued project of finding life, beauty, and play in the mundane, the fantastic, and the forgotten.
Genevieve Hendricks is Assistant Professor of Art History
Hollins University
This essay appears in the catalog Robert Sulkin: Photographs 1973-2019
Eleanor D. Wilson Museum
Hollins University
[1] Susan Sontag, On Photography, Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, Ltd. 1977: 15.
