Tony Oursler is a prolific contemporary artist, known internationally for his inventive state-of-the-art combinations of technology, sculpture, and performance.  He has been an innovator of new media work since the early 1980s, focusing on video, digital projection and installation. In the last category, he merges the spoken word with other human-produced sounds, including burps, farts, whispers, breathing and sighs, into his sculptural assemblages.

Above: ‘TER3′ (2015) aluminum, acrylic, resin, LCD screens, media players, sound performed by Jinnie Lee 46.75 x 36.5 x 3.5” Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong xxxxx 

Early on in his career Oursler concentrated on dynamic theatrical dramaturgy and experimentation, using animation, montage and projection.  His creations are never static thanks to the assimilated, underlying sound and video components, transforming each object into a moving sculptural form or image.  A viewer cannot passively go through an Oursler exhibition, since every phantasmagorical sculpture beckons the viewer to pause to hear its story.  In order to receive the murmured messages you must move close to his eccentric animations and listen attentively to their oft-poignant communication.

One begins to wonder if this artist ever stops or sleeps, since in only seven months of this year his work has been shown in London, New York City and Adelaide, Australia. On July 6^th, a major new production titled Imponderable, will open at the Luma Foundation in Arles France and run through 20 September.  The two-part project composed of a 600-page book and film, is based on Oursler’s private archive of photographs, publications and unique objects, summarizing a social, spiritual and intellectual history dating back to the early 18th.  This intimate collection initiated by Maja Hoffmann and the LUMA Foundation, and curated by Beatrix Ruf and Tom Eccles. provides not only new insights into information assembled by the artist over the years, but also an acumen into the trajectory of Oursler’s life, philosophy and work.  According to ‘co-curator’ Tom Eccles, the show, Imponderable, extends the collection’s evanescent quality by attempting to produce an archival show without actually putting any of the archive on display.[i]

At the core of his art is a deeply rooted curiosity about the evermore-pervasive impact of new technology on people psychologically—increasingly touching all facets of existence.  Through humor, irony and the grotesque, his eerie creations draw attention to technology’s effect on human life, as it alters present-day culture and human relationships.  Oursler’s peculiar art is meant to motivate viewers to pause and question technology’s history and to query about its influence on life in the 21^st century.

Left: CV(15), 2015, wood, LCD screens, inkjet print, sound performed by Jason Scott Henderson and Joanna Smolenski 106 x 71.5 x 30.5” Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong

As a member of a generation that was raised on television and witnessed the constant surge of new electronic media from video to the Internet, Oursler comprehends that technology is capable of controlling and even dehumanizing us as a race.  Originally, he sought becoming a painter when he began his formal education in 1975 at Cal Arts. There, he studied with artists Judy Pfaff, Douglas Huebler, Jonathan Borofsky, and John Baldessari, who stressed content over form.  At the age of about 20, Oursler was introduced to video, and, by 1976 he had produced his first serious media work, Joe, Joe’s Transsexual Brother and Joe’s Woman.  Early in his career, he perceived how technology compels people yet simultaneously intimidates them.  Oursler embraced technology as an artist’s tool not because it was hip or trendy, but because he saw it as a means of probing the inner self—a liminal zone where abstruse truths abound but are faintly perceived.  For him, “technology is the real ‘heart’ of our age, uninterruptedly surrounding, manipulating, and transforming us”.  He remains immersed in observing how new technology, nevertheless, causes individuals to feel uneasy despite its commonplaceness and penetrating impact on a global society.  His steadfast experiments of the past decades make apparent that all along his work has anticipated swift advance.

Raised Catholic, Tony Oursler continues to be fascinated by the binary disparities between good/evil and right/wrong.  He capitalizes on such dual forces to empower his technological sculptures that break down barriers between art and life, as well as amid his work and the viewer.  He recognizes that the unfathomable and the eerie, jointly with the old dialectics of good and evil, science and magic, still endure today, magnetically enchanting the human psyche.  These antithetical forces behind human life are at the root of Oursler’s artistic productions, along with his interest in the populace’s relationship to technology and science.  Fulton Oursler, his late grandfather, wrote The Greatest Story Ever Told, right, which was later developed into the 1965 epic film. Fulton also worked with the renowned illusionist and escapologist, Harry Houdini, aiding Houdini near the end of his life in his work to expose fraudulent psychic mediums towards. In so doing, the elder Oursler acquired a sizeable archive of photographs, advertisements, props and other material related to stage trickery. Over time, Tony Oursler has drawn inspiration from his grandfather’s collection, adding and extending its range to include modern-day, inexplicable phenomena, UFO photographs, conspiracy theories, and other examples of contemporary, unexplainable twaddle. Without question, phenomena like magic, spiritualism and superstition hold a special place in his psyche; sorcery and the paranormal, especially, have been a part of his life.[ii]

It is most certain that the Arles archive project will augment this component of the artist’s life.  The Luma Foundation’s press release elucidates the 4-D film Imponderable: “The film Imponderable gives voice to the archive, focusing on a small group of important images involving a very personal family story with very public characters; it explores the contrasting and overlapping belief systems implicit within his grandfather’s engagement with the debunking of paranormal activity in the ’20s. The plot includes stage magicians, religious figures, and scientists aligning themselves against mediums, con men, and pseudoscientists. They are propelled by both conflicting ideologies and their fascination with the imponderable.” Referring to the Archive project Oursler told Hannah Ghorashi at ArtNews, “It’ll be about the way magical thinking is actually the norm in our culture…If you say that one third of the American public does not believe in evolution, or 50 percent of the American public has seen UFOs, or 40 percent of the American public believes in ghosts—these beliefs are not necessarily as far out as you think.”[iii]

Left: INK+, 2015 aluminum, paint, LCD screen, media player, sound performed by Holly Stanton 47 x 33.5 x 3.25”. Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong

Although irony informs his particular working style, Oursler is unlike some artists, in that his art holds no place for cynicism. He neither pretends to have answers for society’s problems and wrongs, nor does he engage in strident social critique.  He is not an ideologue or beholden to critical theory but, rather simply, an artist-investigator who chooses to measure the pulse of our time through his video/digital pageants revealing his observations and concerns to his viewing public.  He continuously probes the current psychological state of individuals who are visually bombarded through every waking hour, as they are consumed by ‘Big Data.’

Tony Oursler’s recent show at Lehmann Maupin Gallery at 201 Chrystie Street, NYC, is a smaller version of his exhibition “template/variant/friend/stranger” displayed in January 2015 at the Lisson Gallery, in London. This much larger show included drawings.  Both hypermedia exhibits, though, focus on his attraction to human identity in relationship to the techniques of facial recognition technology, (a computer application for automatic identification of a person by means of a video frame from another source).  As an artist, he investigates the nuanced implications of these mechanisms by focusing on their ubiquity in daily life.

Right: Ello (2003), Fibreglass, dvd, dvd player and projector,125 x 125 x 42cm. Lisson Gallery, London.

Characteristically, facial recognition technology is used in security systems, military, intelligence and homeland security, and are comparable to other biometrics, such as fingerprint or optical recognition systems.  As in past exhibitions, Oursler demonstrates that he is on top of the technology dialogue concerning identity, disclosing in current work his concern for how it infiltrates our daily lives. “If you’re a frequent international traveler, and you find yourself flying into Washington, D.C.’s Dulles airport a lot, then your headshot might start showing up in a government database. You haven’t done anything wrong—at least, we hope not—but odds are good that you might be randomly selected for a quick picture.  According to Motherboard, U.S. Customs and Border Protection rolled out a new initiative starting March 11^th, whereby random Americans entering the U.S. might get their headshots taken as part of a new program designed to ferret out potential imposters.”[iv]  Comprehending the intensified sophistication and rifeness of facial scanning in today’s society is crucial when observing Oursler’s new work, probing biometric data, and how and by whom it is exploited.

The exhibition at Lehmann Maupin Gallery is a bizarre amalgam of fantasy and distorted reality, centering on the extension of human identity through facial recognition technology.  Oursler’s four, large floor panel heads and six abstract, aluminum mask-like forms, reminiscent of the “Man in the Iron Mask”[v], offer an examination of the face and emotion in our virtual information age.  Concentrating on the impact of multifaceted technologies used to capture our identity, every work in the exhibit is implanted with continuously playing video screens portraying blinking eyes and mouths that speak.  Each mien is coated in a different reflective, metallic surface colors in black, white, pink and red. The individual surfaces contain a unique display of marks, nodes, numbers, lines and geometric patterns linked to algorithmic facial recognition[vi].  In several of the metallic configurations, the viewer seems to be assimilated within the reflective surface.

Left: EUC%, 2015 wood, LCD screens, inkjet print, sound performed by Holly Stanton, Jim Fletcher, and Brandon Olson 113 x 71.5 x 30.5”. Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong

Juxtaposition of the proficient mathematical mapping paired with the underlayer of a simulated human face, further synthesizes an implication that a real human being—a blend of physical traits and emotion—is reduced to a non-human algorithmic code.  Quietly, each facial construct seemingly conveys various messages in a haunting, whispering voice: “Who are your friends?” Who are your enemies?” , “Yah, you think you know me but you don’t!” or “Look at yourself, look at me!” are spoken, alerting the viewer that the person seemingly trapped within the code signifies a complex idiosyncratic being. As a group they reveal Oursler’s qualms about the efficacy and ramifications of new technology’s ability to cryptograph portrayal in an attempt to regulate human identity.  This current display evinces a continuing body of media work on cybernetic technology and its effect on contemporary humanity. While his work may allude to the realm affiliated with a science-fiction novel or film, what Oursler presents is a thought-provoking Zeitgeist—this is the state of affairs in 2015, befittingly his imaginative faces are candidly situated in the dialogue of the 21st century.

Right: Installation view, with (left) #ISO, 2015 wood, LCD screens, inkjet print, sound performed by Josie Keefe and Laura Hunt 109 x 71.25 x 30.5″. Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong 

An examination of Tony Oursler’s encyclopedic oeuvre confirms that his wide-ranging art has undergone a significant metamorphosis, to continually transmute as he perceptively observes a fluctuating technological world.  Elements from previous series oft are recycled and incorporated into his incessantly varying constructions. His uninterrupted visual/technical vocabulary expands into commanding new environments, installations, shapes and ingenious puzzles.  Because of this artist’s methodical approach to everything he tackles, Oursler has acquired an astute media erudition and piercing clarity of vision. Technology, humanism, social consciousness, and artistic invention synthesize to form the matrix of his aesthetic practice. Reminiscent of Antonin Artaud’s theater, embodying danger, laughter, and sternness, Oursler’s visual drama, is also both subject and object. Oursler’s techno-theatrics push the denotation of sculpture and continue to surprise us with his uncanny delights and insights.

By: Elaine A. King, Contributing Writer

Elaine is an independent critic and curator living in the Washington, DC area. She is a professor of History of Art, Criticism & Museum Studies, Carnegie Mellon University

Tony Ourlser’s work is on view at the Luma Foundation, Arles, France—Pierre Collet, Imagine

+33 680 84 87 71

collet@aec-imagine.com

Footnotes:

[i] “Tony Oursler’s spooky archive is coming to Arles”, Phaidon.com,

[ii] Elaine A. King, Sculpture Magazine, January/February 2005.

[iii] Hannah Ghorashi, “Black Magic: Tony Oursler On His Upcoming LUMA Exhibition”, ArtNews On Line, http://www.artnews.com/2015/06/16/black-magic-tony-ourslers-upcoming-luma-exhibition/. A version of this story originally appeared in the June 2015 issue of ARTnews on page 32 under the title “Black Magic.”

[iv] David Murphy, “U.S. Customs Testing Facial Recognition at Dulles Airport,” PC Magazine, March 22, 2015 (PC Magazine is a computer magazine published by Ziff Davis.  A print edition was published from 1982 to January 2009. Publication of online editions started in late 1994 and continues to this day.)

[v]  The Man in the Iron Mask (French: L’Homme au Masque de Fer) is a name given to a prisoner arrested as Eustache Dauger in 1669 or 1670, and held in a number of jails, including the Bastille and the Fortress of Pignerol (today Pinerolo, Italy). Writer and philosopher Voltaire claimed (in the second edition of his Questions sur l’Encyclopédie, published in 1771) that the prisoner wore an iron mask and was the older, illegitimate brother of Louis XIV. In the late 1840s, writer Alexandre Dumas elaborated on the theme in the final installment of his Three Musketeers saga.

[vi]  A facial recognition system is a computer application for automatically identifying or verifying a person from a digital image or a video frame from a video source. One of the ways to do this is by comparing selected facial features from the image and a facial database.

http://surveillance-and-society.org/articles2%282%29/algorithmic.pdf