In the Spaces Between
"Much has been said about the models, poses and
gestures captured in the photographic images of Carson Zullinger. He is at
heart a figurative artist and exploring human depth through photography is the
story he is committed to telling. His recent exhibitions at the Biggs Museum of
American Art and the Delaware Contemporary have been reflections on gesture,
movement and narrative. However, attention should be given to Zullinger's
evocation of space and the growing importance landscape has taken in his
artwork in the past decade.
Zullinger has stated the images he creates
"derive from the exploration of the inner self, and its contrast with the
physical world" and yet the environments surrounding his models, featured
in Elements, play the critical role in his latest work from Australia. In
the past, the artist has dedicated some notable attention into pure landscape
studies in the work he has exhibited and currently featured on his website. He
has regularly honored the exciting vacation destinations to Hawaii and the
Rocky Mountains with his wife, fellow photographer Patt Panzer, in his
photographs. Also, their participation in the Zoefest, a photographers' retreat
to remote destinations for an intense work schedule and critical support by
like-minded artists, increased Zullinger's attention to capturing the
distinctive qualities of each location. His use of models, and the symbolically
charged poses they perform with Zullinger, is the constant across these works and
the exotic worlds his subjects inhabit display the most dynamic forms of
change.
In the 2018 Australian images, especially in the
largest section of Elements called the Terra Mare series,
Zullinger places the viewer into tightly cropped and intimately enclosed
landscapes of intense textures. In many images, representation of the figure is
nearly dwarfed by architectonic forms, patterns of growth and strong diagonal
coastal lines of land meeting water. In the most successful of these images,
when his models are contrasted with angled rock formations and knife-like
forests, his figures add a poetic contrast within wild environments, a
meditative moment, but the land dominates. The viewer is always in close
proximity to the model, always within earshot, and this intimacy heightens
attention of the space the artist cultivates between them. The space between and
surrounding the model and viewer is the true subject of these photos.
Zullinger’s sensitivity to the effect that
these environments, these enlivened spaces between, can have upon the narrative
of his compositions is reflected in the other Elements: Aqua, Caelum
and Lumen in Tenenbris. While he has explored underwater photography with
models for much of his career, it is rare to see a large group of works that
rely so heavily upon the shapes made with submerged textiles. In Aqua,
these textiles define the models while giving form to invisible forces under
the water. Like the patterns of light against the pool’s walls, and very much
like the artist’s exploration of landscape, the textiles become an additional
character in the narrative and visual marker of these stories’ contexts. The
artist’s spatial studies are further explored in Caelum, made up largely
of interiors in natural lighting, and Lumen in Tenebris, his light
paintings. In these images, the tension between materiality and space creates a
range of symbolic relationships with the models spanning from backdrop, to
attire, to filter. The Lumen in Tenebris series is especially successful
at painting draped models into moments of their story with light, their poses
dramatized by the spaces from which they emerge. Carson Zullinger has always excelled at
storytelling through the body. However, he seems to be exploring the notion
that the best stories come from characterization of the whole scene and all its
constituent players. His figures work equally as well as co-stars alongside the
rich environments he drapes, layers and folds around the body. His
relationships then take center stage and the complexity of spaces, forms and
textures become something entirely left to chance."
Ryan Grover, Sewell C. Biggs Curator of American Art, The Biggs Museum of American Art
©Carson Zullinger
Images from Australia, 2018, Zoefest, an artist retreat organized by Zoe Wiseman
