Robert Smithson, The Eliminator (1964/2004)

Metal, reflective panels, neon

27 x 21 3/4 x 20 in. (68.6 x 55.2 x 50.8 cm)

Installation: Hypothetical Islands, Marian Goodman Gallery London, 2020

Photograph: Lewis Ronald

The Eliminator is part of the Sylvio Perlstein Collection. The exhibition copy displayed in Hypothetical Islands was made in 2004, authorized by Nancy Holt for the Estate of Robert Smithson.

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

neon lights in a zig zag pattern in a three panel glass box

Robert Smithson, The Eliminator (1964/2004)

Metal, reflective panels, neon

27 x 21 3/4 x 20 in. (68.6 x 55.2 x 50.8 cm)

Installation: Hypothetical Islands, Marian Goodman Gallery London, 2020

Photograph: Lewis Ronald

The Eliminator is part of the Sylvio Perlstein Collection. The exhibition copy displayed in Hypothetical Islands was made in 2004, authorized by Nancy Holt for the Estate of Robert Smithson.

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

Robert Smithson, The Eliminator (1964/2004)

Metal, reflective panels, neon

27 x 21 3/4 x 20 in. (68.6 x 55.2 x 50.8 cm)

Installation: Hypothetical Islands, Marian Goodman Gallery London, 2020

Photograph: Lewis Ronald

The Eliminator is part of the Sylvio Perlstein Collection. The exhibition copy displayed in Hypothetical Islands was made in 2004, authorized by Nancy Holt for the Estate of Robert Smithson.

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

neon lights in a zig zag pattern in a three panel glass box in a large black room

Robert Smithson, The Eliminator (1964/2004)

Metal, reflective panels, neon

27 x 21 3/4 x 20 in. (68.6 x 55.2 x 50.8 cm)

Installation: Hypothetical Islands, Marian Goodman Gallery London, 2020

Photograph: Lewis Ronald

The Eliminator is part of the Sylvio Perlstein Collection. The exhibition copy displayed in Hypothetical Islands was made in 2004, authorized by Nancy Holt for the Estate of Robert Smithson.

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

Robert Smithson, The Eliminator (1964/2004)

Metal, reflective panels, neon

27 x 21 3/4 x 20 in. (68.6 x 55.2 x 50.8 cm)

Installation: Hypothetical Islands, Marian Goodman Gallery London, 2020

Photograph: Lewis Ronald

The Eliminator is part of the Sylvio Perlstein Collection. The exhibition copy displayed in Hypothetical Islands was made in 2004, authorized by Nancy Holt for the Estate of Robert Smithson.

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

neon lights in a zig zag pattern in a three panel glass box in a large black room

Robert Smithson, The Eliminator (1964/2004)

Metal, reflective panels, neon

27 x 21 3/4 x 20 in. (68.6 x 55.2 x 50.8 cm)

Installation: Hypothetical Islands, Marian Goodman Gallery London, 2020

Photograph: Lewis Ronald

The Eliminator is part of the Sylvio Perlstein Collection. The exhibition copy displayed in Hypothetical Islands was made in 2004, authorized by Nancy Holt for the Estate of Robert Smithson.

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

1964—1966

The Eliminator

Robert Smithson
1964
Metal, reflective panels, neon
27 x 21 3/4 x 20 in. (68.6 x 55.3 x 50.8 cm)
Sylvio Perlstein Collection, Antwerp
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

Fashioned out of a zigzagging glass tube of flashing red neon light housed in a reflective metal frame, ​The Eliminator ​is a piece entirely comprised of its alternating presence and absence as the lights turn on and off. The effect is purposefully disorienting, leaving the viewer intermittently dazzled and blinded, with nothing of permanence to ground their perception—the mirrored surfaces reflect only empty space. Named after the winner in a drag-race, ​The Eliminator nods at the cheap thrills of American Pop culture, its dearth of physical substance indicating a vacuous preoccupation with appearance.

The Eliminator overloads the eye whenever the red neon flashes on, and in so doing diminishes the viewer's memory dependencies or traces. Memory vanishes, while looking at The Eliminator. The viewer doesn't know what he is looking at, because he has no surface space to fixate on; thus he becomes aware of the emptiness of his own sight or sees through his sight. Light, mirror reflection, and shadow fabricate the perceptual intake of the eyes. Unreality becomes actual and solid.

The Eliminator is a clock that doesn't keep time, but loses it. The intervals between the flashes of neon are "void intervals" or what George Kubler calls, "the rupture between past and future." The Eliminator orders negative time as it avoids historical space.

Robert Smithson

Published in Jack Flam (ed.), Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, University of California Press, Berkeley, California, 1996, p.327

Related Info

1964—1966
a wall based sculpture with an eye at the center
Radio Cyclops
Robert Smithson
1964
1964—1966

In Radio Cyclops (1964), a wide-open eye occupies the center, linked via a circuit to a hot pink band of color. When looking at the sculpture, one sees one’s own eyes looking back, reflected and refracted in the mirrored surfaces. Made at a time when Smithson was experimenting with plastics and developing ideas from his collages, this wall-based sculpture incorporates Plexiglass, polished blue steel, and mirrors on a wooden support.

1964—1966
a machine on a hot pink background
The Machine Taking a Wife
Robert Smithson
1964
1964—1966

In The Machine Taking a Wife, Robert Smithson expands his use of collage into sculpture. A green-tinged image of an industrial machine sits above a similarly tinted image of a female pinup, framed in a hot pink outline, the two linked by a  rectifier tube - a vacuum tube diode that converts alternating current (AC) into direct current (DC) in electronic equipment. Like the assemblage Honeymoon Machine from the same year, this wall-based sculpture draws on Smithson’s early erotic cartouches and the critical legacy of Marcel Duchamp.

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