These images are from Painting + Paper: Ooze, Tony Oursler's most recent exhibition at Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York, running 17 Feb - 24 March 2007.
TONY OURSLER, (Usually) Black Anythingyou want, 2007
aluminium, acrylic, LCD screen, DVD player
79 x 45 x 4.5 inches
20.7 x 114.3 x 11.4 cm
COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND LEHMANN MAUPIN GALLERY,
NEW YORK
Periodically, the eyes (large and small) of (Usually) Black Anythingyou want switch from colour to a negative black and white image. Then switch back. The eyes look about, blink, deferring attention across the room.
TONY OURSLER, Red "Love Hurts" Laboratory, 2007
aluminium, acrylic, LCD screen, DVD player
58 x 47 x 4.5 inches
147.3 x 119.4 x 11.4 cm
COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND LEHMANN MAUPIN GALLERY,
NEW YORK
The lips, in Red "Love Hurts" Laboratory, are pursed repeatedly, with some difficulty. Then, a very quiet whisper.
Close up, to listen, its construction seems apparent: the hard surface, the brushstrokes, the screen surface and distortion of the mouth - the skin of the performer blushed red with make-up. The whisper is difficult to make out. It's necessary to get close enough to be confided in: "it happens...".
Articulated in a collision of sculpture, painting, video, and performance, these seven works are exhibited in a single room. Formed in aluminium, and set slightly off the gallery wall, a flat, coloured surface is opened to reveal body parts - an eye or eyes, a face, lips, fingers - morphed to reflect the abstract shape in which they are captured. Over time, in some of the works, the body parts change.
TONY OURSLER, Invisible Green Link?, 2007
aluminium, acrylic, LCD screen, DVD player
57 x 61 x 4.5 inches
144.8 x 154.9 x 11.4
COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND LEHMANN MAUPIN GALLERY,
NEW YORK
The eye, rather bloodshot, closes, opens, seems to fix on something. Then, looking up, to the left. The eye blinks, it's action apparently slowed down.
Issues of Presence are explicit - these works take up each other's time. Fixed to the wall, they assert a belonging to the animated realm of the visitor: some of them look and wait.
Linked to this, these pieces evade the forms they explicitly invoke. They assert painting, relocating video art into conventions of surface, paint, the hand, and abstraction. At the same time, this abstraction is loaded: these works play with play, denial, objectness, investment, fiction, science fiction, colour theory, gothic, animation.
Key phrases and concepts might include:
aura
colour
outer space
TONY OURSLER, Bluerealisation with Head, 2007
aluminium, acrylic, LCD screen, DVD player
92 x 42 x 4.5 inches
233.7 x 106.7 x 11.4 cm
COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND LEHMANN MAUPIN GALLERY,
NEW YORK
Bluerealisation with Head opens up a dimension behind the picture plane. The eye attempts to look down, the eyelid closes, opens. Eventually, the video performer moves back. A mouth takes the place of the eye, whispering. The performer moves in and out of shadow and focus, at times looking out, then head shaking rapidly, then a whisper: "see outside range of your vehicle....see...yes, I cried". Then the eye returns.
Related terms might be:
mirror and surrogate
TONY OURSLER, Pink-too-long Fluid, 2007
aluminium, acrylic, LCD screen, DVD player
57 x 55 x 4.5 inches
144.8 x 139.7 x 11.4 cm
COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND LEHMANN MAUPIN GALLERY,
NEW YORK
The eye of Pink-too-long Fluid looks up to the left, then out. Then to the right, and continues, slowly. Eventually, the image fades to lips, that perform an extended, slow kiss on the lens, almost filling the video image, leaving a coloured smear over the opening. Then returns to the eye.
In the adjacent room at Lehmann Maupin, seven works on paper - comprising clusters of images, drawings and notes - allude to outlines, contexts, thought forms and processes. They reference colour theory, ghosting, extra-terrestrial contact, the electromagnetic spectrum, meteors, colour blindness tests, the Northern Lights, theatricality, time, Phobos, inviting connections with other works.
Amongst these may be:
Sound Digressions in Seven Colours,
Spaced, 2006
Thought Forms, 2006
The Influence Machine, 2000
TONY OURSLER, Purple Ideation Exposure, 2007
aluminium, acrylic, LCD screen, DVD player
59 x 47 x 4.5 inches
149.9 x 119.4 x 11.4 cm
COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND LEHMANN MAUPIN GALLERY,
NEW YORK
The small eye of Purple Ideation Exposure persistently looks forward. Eventually, its focus shifts. Occasionally the eye disappears to black. In the larger opening, partial images of two bodies intertwining, sometimes indistinct, appear and pass by in continual movement: hands; a shoulder; part of the torso; a foot morphed like a hand; long hair.
Key connections might also be with:
Underwater (Blue/Green), 1996
TONY OURSLER, Ectovapor Ever-Changing White, 2007
aluminium, acrylic, LCD screen, DVD player
82 x 54 x 4.5 inches
208.3 x 137.2 x 11.4 cm
COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND LEHMANN MAUPIN GALLERY,
NEW YORK
The mouth of Ectovapor Ever-Changing White draws in the air, then, as if holding its breath, or moving its lips as if about to speak or smile, shows its teeth. Periodically, speaking in a whisper or a hiss - "sick in the head" - other remarks - a vapour passes across the mouth, and the lips are subtly tinted with a spectrum of colours, one after the other.
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