Bill Sullivan's exhibition What's the Matter describes well the sensation of disorientation that greets a visitor upon entry. A consummate experimenter in different forms of art making, Sullivan presents paintings and photographs that appear to upend conventional expectations for the media. His photorealist paintings contrasted against his manipulated photographic endeavors inspire a series of questions concerning the utility and intent behind an artist choosing each practice. Photorealist painting is no new development in the art world, having been greatly popularized in 1960s America. Similarly, contemporary photography has countless examples of digital practitioners who declare that the medium once hailed for its fidelity to life is an emperor with no clothes. Sullivan's works prove exemplary in that he masters multiple approaches, only to then match them against one another.
His art’s dichotomy is especially apparent when one considers it amongst his Courts series; it is as if these stages for rivalry bridge the divide between his styles.In his People I Know series, he uses his oils to document acquaintances in relatively unguarded moments. These are not portraits intended to aggrandize their subjects; they are meticulous snapshots that capture the subject without any overt, artificial signals to the sorts of personalities they depict.
Meanwhile, in manipulated photographs like his Flames series, Sullivan reserves digital practices for a study of light in a vein akin to the Impressionists. He does with monochromatic pixels what Monet did with multi-colored paints. Works like the Self-Portrait with Mirror series also introduce those notions of the voyeur and flâneur that are so crucial to discussions of late nineteenth-century art. Everything about these works is hyper-stylized and potentially loaded with significance, whether in the beautification of surveillance or the intricate boxes of light grids.
At first it would seem that Sullivan simply seeks to utilize painting as a documentary medium and photography as a study in formal properties. However, this assumption is complicated by the fact that his portraits rely on photography. As viewers progress through the exhibition, they realize that photography and painting are not vying teams on a court; they are the spectators of the sport. The real game taking place – the one with which Sullivan is truly preoccupied – is the contemporary art world’s ever-changing opinions and understandings of the hybridization of mixed-media forms and thinking.
Lauren Turner, December 2009
