Alucinor

"Henry Wolff's images of plants blur and dissolve in hazes of colour generated by Wolff's broken Box Brownie camera. The plants are Brugmansia - commonly known as Angel's Trumpet. The viewer's attention has little choice but to shift and slide over the subject matter, tumbling vertiginously over and into foggy fields of pure colour. One feels as if one is walking through a garden while one's senses fail and unravel under the influence of sunlight, and perhaps also under the effects of Angel's Trumpet itself, which contains a natural hallucinogen. For Wolff this sensory disarray does not simply yield a distortion of reality. In drawing our awareness away from the objects in front of the camera, it focuses our attention all the better on the phenomenal - and perhaps points to a broader spiritual reality of which the phenomenal is part."

Excerpt from Michael Newall, 'On the Spiritual in Contemporary Art' in 'Phenomenal' catalogue, October 2023.