Smithson’s "The Eliminator" on show in New York
Robert Smithson’s only neon work, The Eliminator (1964), is on display in a group exhibition at Hauser & Wirth, New York celebrating the collection of Sylvio Perlstein. For the last four decades Perlstein has been building a collection addressing key moments in twentieth century art where the understanding contemporary art has been stretched and reworked by artists. A Luta Continua (The Fight Continues) presents works by 266 artists. The exhibition is curated by David Rosenberg, who developed the first public showing of the Perlstein Collection for La Maison Rouge, Paris in 2007.
In a short text, Smithson describes how 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 does not 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 does not 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, 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
©Holt/Smithson Foundation, Licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York
