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Tony Oursler (second from left)

Tony Oursler (born 1957) is an American multimedia and installation artist. He completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the California Institute for the Arts, Valencia, California in 1979. His art covers a range of mediums working with video, sculpture, installation, performance and painting. The artist currently lives and works in New York City. He is married to painter Jacqueline Humphries.^[1]

Early life and education

Born in Manhattan in 1957, Oursler was brought up in Nyack, New York.^[2] At CalArts, his fellow students included Mike Kelley, Sue Williams, Stephen Prina and Jim Shaw. John Baldessari — with whom he did an independent study^[3] — and Laurie Anderson were teachers.^[4] Oursler moved back to New York in 1981^[5] and was picked up by Electronic Arts Intermix.^[6]

In 1999, Oursler moved to a studio near New York City Hall.^[7]

Work

Tapes, Installations: 1977-1989

Tony Oursler is known for his fractured-narrative handmade video tapes including The Loner (1980) and EVOL (1984). These works involve elaborate sound tracks, painted sets, stop-action animation and optical special effects created by the artist. The early videotapes have been exhibited extensively in alternative spaces and museums, they are distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix.^[8] His early installation works are immersive dark-room environments with video, sound, and language mixed with colorful constructed sculptural elements. In these projects, Oursler experimented with methods of removing the moving image from the video monitor using reflections in water, mirrors, glass and other devices. For example, L-7, L-5, exhibited at The Kitchen in 1983, used the translucent quality of video reflected on broken glass.

Projection: 1991

Oursler began working with small LCD video projectors in 1991 in his installation The Watching presented at documenta 9, featuring his first video doll and dummy. This work utilizes handmade soft cloth figures combined with expressive faces animated by video projection. Oursler then produced a series of installations that combined found objects and video projections. Judy (1993) explored the relationship between multiple personality disorder and mass media. Get Away II features a passive/aggressive projected figure wedged under a mattress that confronts the viewer with blunt direct address. These installations led to great popular and critical acclaim.^{[citation needed]}

Signature works have been his talking lights, such as Streetlight (1997), his series of video sculptures of eyes with television screens reflected in the pupils, and ominous talking heads such as Composite Still Life (1999). An installation called Optics (1999) examines the polarity between dark and light in the history of the camera obscura. In his text "Time Stream", Oursler proposed that architecture and moving image installation have been forever linked by the camera obscura noting that cave dwellers observed the world as projections via peep holes. Oursler's interest in the ephemeral history of the virtual image lead to large scale public projects and permanent installations by 2000.^[9]

Public Projects: 2000-2009

• The Public Art Fund and Artangel commissioned the Influence Machine in 2000.^[10] This installation marks the artist's first major outdoor project and thematically traced the development of successive communication devices from the telegraph to the personal computer as a means of speaking with the dead. Oursler used smoke, trees and buildings as projection screens in Madison Square Park NYC and Soho Square London. He then completed a number of permanent public projects in Barcelona, New Zealand, Arizona including "Braincast" at the Seattle Public Library. In 2009 he created a series of commissioned video installations at the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Astoria, New York.^[11]

Tony Oursler:Monsters, Tony Oursler & éditions Take5

Collaborations

Oursler was part of the musical and performance group, "Poetics", with fellow California Institute of the Arts students Mike Kelley and John Miller.^[12] "Mike played the drums and I sang and we both played organ — we both bonded on that probably because of our Catholic upbringing. Though to say 'played' is an exaggeration; we made noises," Oursler said in a 2012 interview on the occasion of Kelley's death.^[13]

Oursler was a longtime friend of David Bowie and collaborated with him on several works.^[14][15] Oursler created the background videos that played at David Bowie's 50th birthday party concert^[16] in 1997. In 2000, Oursler and Bowie collaborated on the four-minute short film Empty, in which Bowie's disembodied head provided narration.^[17] Oursler made the video to accompany Bowie's January 2013 single "Where Are We Now?",^[18] and a piece showing two Bowie heads in conversation with each other for the 2013 "David Bowie Is" exhibit organized by the Victoria and Albert Museum.^[19]

Film and video

See videos Electronic Arts Intermix ^[20]

• “Tony Oursler Video Projections” by Tony Oursler, Inner-Tube Videos. 2002, 27 minutes, Color. NY: Inner-Tube Videos.

Exhibitions

Oursler's work has been exhibited in public institutions including the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; documenta VIII, IX, Kassel; Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the D.O.P. Foundation, Caracas; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Skulptur Projekte Münster; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC; the Tate, Liverpool. "Introjection”, the artist’s mid-career survey, was on view from 1999 to 2001 at the Williams College Museum of Art in Massachusetts, the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the Des Moines Art Center, Iowa. In 2000, Ourlser’s installation The Darkest Color Infinitely Amplified was presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Tate Modern.^[21] Oursler’s work was included in Glasstress at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011).^[22]

2010

From October–December 2010, the Lehmann Maupin Gallery hosted Oursler's exhibition entitled Peak.^[23] The exhibition was timed with Oursler's Valley, the inaugural exhibition of the Adobe Museum of Digital Media.

2011

• Jan. 13th- Mar. 5, 2011 JGM Galerie, Paris, France


• July 2–17, 2011 The Influence Machine, Whitworth Art Gallery, England


• Mar. 18th-Jun. 18th, 2011 Commune Milano, Italy, Milano PAC

2012

• "Oxt Variations", 313 Art Project, Seoul, Korea


• "Denouement", FaMa Gallery, Verona, Italy (cat.)


• "Open Obscura", PAC - Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, Milan, Italy


• Sculpture, Jensen Gallery, Sydney, Australia


• Sculpture, Jensen/Fox, Auckland, New Zealand


• "Super Pop (and Not)", Contemporary by Angela Li, Hong Kong


• "top–down–bottom–up", Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco, CA


• "Lapsed Fantasist", Galerie Hans Mayer, Düsseldorf, Germany

"False-Color Actions", Galeria Soledad Lorenzo, Madrid, Spain

• "Scribble, Adumbrations", Avlskarl Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark


• "Face to Face", ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Denmark

2013

• "Phantasmagoria", Grand-Hornu MAC’s, Hornu, Belgium (cat.)


• "Glare Schematics", A Baronian Gallery, Brussels, Belgium


• "hopped (popped)", Edward Hopper House, Nyack, New York


• Galeria Leme, São Paulo, Brazil


• Ekeberg Sculpture Park, Oslo, Norway


• John Buckley Gallery, Melbourne, Australia


• "Phobic / White Trash", JGM Galerie & Campoli Presti, Paris, France


• "strawberry ecstasy green", Espace Louis Vuitton, Venice, Italy


• "Tony Oursler: UFOs and Effigies", Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery, New York


• "Little Worlds", Honolulu Museum of Art, Honolulu, Hawaii


• "agentic iced etcetera", PinchukArtCentre, Kiev, Ukraine


• "The Influence Machine", Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom


• "Norte Sul Leste Oeste", Museu de Arte Moderna, São Paulo, Brazil

2014

• "X ERGO Y", The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands


• "I/O underflow", Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, Netherlands (cat.)


• "Obscura", Galerie Hans Mayer, Düsseldorf, Germany


• "Passe-Partout", Baldwin Gallery, Aspen, CO

2015

• Bernier Eliades, Athens, Greece


• "Imponderable: the Archives of Tony Oursler", LUMA Foundation, Arles, France (cat.)


• Lehmann Maupin, New York, NY


• "template/variant/friend/stranger", Lisson Gallery, London, United Kingdom


• "Influence Machine", Blinc Festival Adelaide, Pink Flats, Adelaide, Australia

2016

• The Influence Machine, George Square Gardens, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh


• A*gR_3, Galería Moisés Pérez De Albéniz, Madrid


• M*r>0r, Magazine III Collection


• The Imponderable Archive, CCS Bard Galleries


• Imponderable, MOMA


• Hans Mayer Gallery, Düsseldorf, Germany


• TC: The Most Interesting Man Alive, Chrysler Museum, Virginia


• PriV%te, Lehmann Maupin, Hong Kong

2017

• Unidentified, Redling Fine Art, Los Angeles

Publications

In 2015, Oursler published Imponderable: The Archives of Tony Oursler^[24] with the LUMA Foundation.

Oursler was profiled by the magazine Men's Vogue in 2007. Writer Dan Halpern went with him to New Zealand where he was finishing a massive projection-based installation piece on the private sculpture park of billionaire Alan Gibbs.^[25]

Collections

The Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh), Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain (Paris), the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), the Honolulu Museum of Art,^[26] the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, the Museum of Modern Art (New York City), the Tate Modern, and the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York City) are among the public collections holding work by Oursler.^[27]

Art market

Oursler is represented by:

• 
  Metro Pictures, NYC (see official website)


• 
  Anglim Gilbert Gallery, San Francisco, CA^[28]


• Lehmann Maupin Gallery

See also

• 
  Inside the Artist's Studio, Princeton Architectural Press, 2015. (.mw-parser-output cite.citationfont-style:inherit.mw-parser-output qquotes:"""""""'""'".mw-parser-output code.cs1-codecolor:inherit;background:inherit;border:inherit;padding:inherit.mw-parser-output .cs1-lock-free abackground:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/65/Lock-green.svg/9px-Lock-green.svg.png")no-repeat;background-position:right .1em center.mw-parser-output .cs1-lock-limited a,.mw-parser-output .cs1-lock-registration abackground:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d6/Lock-gray-alt-2.svg/9px-Lock-gray-alt-2.svg.png")no-repeat;background-position:right .1em center.mw-parser-output .cs1-lock-subscription abackground:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Lock-red-alt-2.svg/9px-Lock-red-alt-2.svg.png")no-repeat;background-position:right .1em center.mw-parser-output .cs1-subscription,.mw-parser-output .cs1-registrationcolor:#555.mw-parser-output .cs1-subscription span,.mw-parser-output .cs1-registration spanborder-bottom:1px dotted;cursor:help.mw-parser-output .cs1-hidden-errordisplay:none;font-size:100%.mw-parser-output .cs1-visible-errorfont-size:100%.mw-parser-output .cs1-subscription,.mw-parser-output .cs1-registration,.mw-parser-output .cs1-formatfont-size:95%.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-left,.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-wl-leftpadding-left:0.2em.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-right,.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-wl-rightpadding-right:0.2em
  ISBN 978-1616893040)

References

External links

• Official website


• Metro Pictures: Tony Oursler


• Lisson Gallery: Tony Oursler


• 
  Tony Oursler at Electronic Arts Intermix
  


• 
  Tony Oursler in the Video Data Bank
  


• Tony Oursler in the Mediateca Media Art Space


• 
  Tony Oursler at Kadist Art Foundation
  


• 
  "Tony Oursler Solo Show at PinchukArtCentre in Kyiv, Ukraine". Huffington Post. February 18, 2013. Retrieved November 24, 2013.