07 October - 04 December 2010
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| © Tony Oursler
Studio view, 2010 |
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TONY OURSLER
7 October – 4 December 2010
Lehmann Maupin presents Peak, an exhibition of new works by Tony
Oursler, on view at 201 Chrystie Street, 7 October – 4 December 2010.
Peak continues the artist’s exploration into the ways in which
technology affects the human psyche. Focusing on humankind’s obsessive
relationship to computers and other virtual platforms, the works in this
exhibition are microcosmic scenes that convey the varied nature of
these relationships, such as obsession, escapism, isolation and sexual
fetish. The installations reference dynamic systems and models, such as
flowcharts, Rube Goldberg machines and astronomical orreries. Oursler’s
projections combine glass, clay, steel and other raw materials with a
synthesis of performance language and rhythmic editing.
Oursler explores Masahiro Mori’s "The Uncanny Valley”, which theorizes
that as inanimate objects become closer in appearance to the human form
and face, mankind will find them increasingly disturbing and therefore
cast into the realm of the uncanny. Oursler redefines Mori’s theory by
investigating our contemporary Internet usage, viewing the Internet as a
mechanical reflection of our human psyche, inducing a compulsive
relationship despite its disturbing effect. The dynamic developing
between humans and the virtual apparatus becomes and is an
epistemological mirror of the human consciousness and, thus, is uncanny
in its nature.
Peak at Lehmann Maupin Gallery will be timed with Oursler’s Valley, the
inaugural exhibition of the Adobe Museum of Digital Media. In tandem,
these exhibitions investigate and evoke the realm of the uncanny,
drawing upon the interpretations of Ernst Jentsch, Sigmund Freud, and
Masahiro Mori. For more information on the Adobe Museum of Digital Media
visit www.adobemuseum.com
Tony Oursler is known for his innovative combinations of media, sound,
and performance in order to investigate the relationship between the
individual and mass media system. His new exhibition continues this
practice, employing lights, language, drawings, and installations. The
use of drawing, previously seen in his 2007 exhibition at Lehmann
Maupin, is an essential part of Oursler’s creative process. Oursler uses
drawing as a way of capturing an idea and a means of remembering,
associating, or layering thoughts.
Tony Oursler's work explores the relationship between the individual and
mass media systems with humor, irony, and imagination. He received a
BFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 1979. In 2010 Oursler
presented Lock 2, 4, 6 an immersive exhibition at the Kusthaus Bregenz
in Austria, which took over three floors of the museum and recently, his
retrospective exhibition Dispositifs traveled from the Jeu de Paume in
Paris to the DA2 Domus Atrium in Salamanca and the Kunstforeningen in
Copenhagen. In the Fall of 2010 Oursler will present a solo exhibition
curated by Paulo Venancio at the Centro Cultural Oi Futuro in Brazil.
Oursler is the first artist to have an exhibition in the Adobe Museum of
Digital Media, which launches October, 2010. In a response to Gustav
Courbet’s The Artist’s Studio, Oursler exhibited Studio: Seven Months of
My Aesthetic Education (Plus Some), featuring a multimedia
installation, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Curator
Robert Storr included Oursler’s sculptures in the acclaimed 2004
exhibition Disparities and Deformations: Our Grotesque at SITE Santa Fe.
His work is represented in numerous U.S. museum collections, including
the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the
Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, as well as the Tate Gallery and
the Saatchi Gallery in London and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris,
among other prestigious private collections worldwide. Tony Oursler
lives and works in New York.
www.lehmannmaupin.com |
