Born in 1979 in Brussels (BE)
There are many facets to Jonathan Sullam’s artistic practice: video, photography, installations, sculpture and performance. His works are often suspended between two states, in transition, and even in transformation. Fall and decadence on the one hand. A form of resistance, of preventing on the other. Highly controlled and structured, they also give the feeling of being abandoned or unfinished. This is the case as regards Roi David (King David), the king of spades redrawn on a human scale in neon in two unattached structures, which mirror each other as in a card game. This state of latency is most often reinforced by the opposition between the materials used and the idea or the representation that constitute the work: a glass baseball bat, a black marble bin bag or the photo of the words ‘Eternally temporary’ written with a finger on a steamed up window. Whether the words he uses are more poetic or more conceptual, the reference to history, art or mythology is never very far away. Accustomed to operating in the public space, Jonathan Sullam always associates what he does with the geographical, physical, social or philosophical context in which he is exhibiting. Every intervention encompasses the viewer and places them in a situation of uncertainty, indecision, suspension. For him, every work is a new challenge to elaborate the system most suited to creating the possibility of a shared experience.
