Remember the "little purple" who fascinated a group of people in Basel[1]?
What about projections in the Hudson River hades that brush the screen?
These are masterpieces of Tony Oursler (1957-), the "father of American video sculpture."
Admire Osler's work like stepping foot on the Wizard of Oz. You're Dorothy, and you're exploring the bizarre world that the artist has created for you.
The figures who whisper in the smoke and drift in the wind are scarecrows, blinking softly and forcefully, their eyes wide like lions, projected on organic shapes, twisted and meaningful expressions like tin men.
Artists like Oz create new technological life situations in the installation space of their works by integrating magic, theater performances and visual technologies of the electronic age.
Agentic Iced Etcetera，PinchukArtCentre, Kiev, Ukraine，Feb. 16- Apr. 21, 2013
I learned about him in 2018 and wanted to push him around with the Nicolas Party[3].
His works are very entertaining and attractive, but also make people resistant and uneasy.
He claimed to oppose modernity, and his artistic spirit was modern and critical.
Now that there are short videos in the entertainment world and installations in the art world, how can Osler capture the hearts of both professionals and the public through his white and somewhat outdated video medium?
Rachel listed 7 reasons, let's see if it's right.
Fight modernism with yourself
In His work "Judy" in the 1990s, Osler combined the daily home space with mental illness to interpret "multiple personality disorder", using dolls, dresses, curtains, and empty bouquets and sofas to create a chaotic sense of space.
The audience can choose the characters and find the personalities scattered throughout the exhibition hall.
A noisy child who was pressed under the couch.
The body is deformed in response to technology.
This continues the discussion of the "body" in the Western art tradition, and brings the perspective of the discussion to the changing appearance of the era of electronic technology.
Osler countered modernism with the body, combined with elusive tools such as mysticism, pseudoscience, and stage magic.
Big mouth entertainment and big eyes uneasiness
The videos projected on the sculptures are of out-of-proportion, uncontrolled, bloodshot eyes; thick lips and jagged teeth; and you may find it weird because most of them don't have a nose.
Eyes blinking and spinning; mouths furrowed, laughing, pouting, and at the same time uttering barely audible words through nearby speakers, as if "ghost upper body."
Listen closely and you may hear a face complaining, "You treat me like garbage." I told you I loved you, but I didn't love you."
The other face makes the strange sound that people can't help but say when they see cute children and small animals.
Station B features Osler's documentary[2], which not only includes his masterpieces, but also deciphers how this unforgettable big-eyed big mouth was made.
Wouldn't such video art be too entertaining? But it's so appealing, isn't it more philosophical and unsettling than brushing tiktok, making people want to know what the hell is this in fact?
Just simple places to change and enlarge the eyes and mouth, ignore the nose, why does it cause some people to be happy and others to be upset?
Today's surrealism
Osler's exhibitions are like a journey through wonderland.
In his artistic thinking, he inherits the artistic expression and aesthetic thinking of Surrealism on the subconscious mind and dreams. The faces, mouths and eyes projected on organic blocks respond to the deformed representations in surrealist cinema, photography and painting.
In the concept of virtual image production, the eye is a unique connector whose natural form resembles camara obscura[4] and is the primary form of image construction in all media.
The connection between man and virtual image production plays a key role in Osler's work.
Element (VI), 1997-20006 frequency video installation, variable size (projection on 6 white variable size spheres) duration: 6 10-minute images
"Elements (VI)" is one of the representative works of the artist's three-dimensional projection on the resin sphere. Contains 6 eyes, alluding to the intertwined sight and the relationship between the viewer as he moves between the spheres. In this group of works, the artist expresses the diverse and variable relationship between human beings and technology and nature.
For example, one of the eyes utilizes infrared technology
Probe the Earth's interior and observe stalagmites and stone stalactites in the darkness. One is about surveillance technology, referring to conflict and war. One eye passively watches commercials projected on its cornea and iris. There's also an eye full of electromagnetic mechanical inner workings and circuit board designs for the production of television and movies. The element of fire also appears in one eye, and the picture is some explosion effects that have been removed from the film. Finally, through the sixth eye, the halo and sun halo in the lens
The exploration of light is realized.
Public nostalgia project
Tears of the Cloud in the Hudson River projection project in 2018. Instagram those days was a hit!
Five digital projections are superimposed on the bridge, the surrounding landscape, and the Hudson River. These images, combined with acoustic landscapes, reinvent the night and riverbanks, creating a dramatic experience.
Images used include Hudson River painters, 19th-century utopias
The neighborhood, the female star in the silent film, the experimental musician who lives in Lower Manhattan and South Bronx, and so on.
Osler reorganizes contemporary and historical images in a nonlinear, reconstructive narrative. While revealing a complex past, it encourages us to reflect on the present and inspires us to think about culture and the environment.
This is an artist's layered interpretation of history, the individual, and public space.
Tear of the Cloud，October 10th - October 31st, 2018，Riverside Park South, New York
In recent years, Osler's works are both nostalgic and natural, both visual and physical.
Rachel is no wonder that he is "not a fine work of art in a museum, nor an object that reflects the masses of the times, but a collection of miscellaneous, chaotic, perhaps unconfirmed, unlearned, unknown value".[5]
I would like to ask, has anyone seen Osler's work called "Current" realized in December 2019 in Nanjing Eye? Please ask the Nanjing friends to interpret why he is suddenly so festive in the underworld...?
Art history and museum linkage
In 2005, Osler collaborated with the Musée d'Orsay to select Orsay's "Traffic Director" Courbet's "Studio: A True Allegory That Encapsulates My Seven Years of Artistic and Moral Life", and worked with other artists and audiences to create an integrated work of art.
The Studio: A True Allegory Of Seven Years of My Artistic and Moral Life
With Osler's hands on human faces, projections and script readings, as well as collaborations with contemporary musicians and painters, the audience is part of the work.
The work allows the audience to re-examine the already famous art work, adding an uncertain life to the "traditional" Olympiad.
Isn't this a more real human observation than Courbet's realism?
I remembered seeing the exhibition at the Yokohama Museum of Art before, by Moriyama Mirai and Magritte
The video of the collaboration was captivating – he read the story of the audience based on The Work of Magritte, and accordingly created and performed modern dance
[6]。 This performance allows the audience who see too many famous paintings almost "blindly" to re-polish their eyes.
Modernism demanded a media inherent resistance to painting to give birth to so many forms. Osler was fighting in his own way.
But as an audience member, of course, I can love the modern and the postmodern comprehensive chaos.
Imagery and reality
Osler chose image as the core of artistic language, not only because image is now the most popular product of human visual culture, but also to further discuss the relationship between "reality" and "visual information".
Finally speaking of our cute "Little Purple" and "Little Pink". They are a continuation of the big eyes and big mouth above,
They are glass installations with screens at the eye and mouth positions, showing incoherent images of actors reciting lines, respectively.
Focus Booth，7th - March 10th, 2018，The Armory Show, New York
I think Osler probably wants to say: Will the AI we create be so "vulgar" that it will replace us?
Since our imagination has been constructed, it is normal for AI, which is better constructed and computed more quickly, to have more imagination than we do.
Just as I fell in love with Xiaozi at first sight[1], stupid humans can easily float up and talk when they meet people who are willing to listen to them.
Tech Tools: Exploit or Be Exploited, Art or Internet Addiction?
Osler wants people to have more and more control over the technological tools they have.
The 2021 large retrospective exhibition "Black Box
In an interview[7], he said that the exhibition inspires people to use technology productively, not as consumers, and he wants people to realize that they can think creatively.
He argues that the depth of philosophy is now very evident in culture.
Rachel felt yes too.
Project for Physic Garden, Chelsea Physic Gardens, London, Sep. 18 - Oct. 18, 2010
Osler's recent work and writing are related to the phenomenon of social networking.
He's been thinking about magic (it's magical thinking not magic...). Conspiracy theories are very interested in changing the way we interact socially.
Humans have spent more time on screens than they really do. As social media replaces centralized journalism, humanity has to face the consequences of a proliferation of disinformation.
Psciotic GraftsHigh Gallery | 3 Piazza Vittorio Veneto, Turin, 10124 | ItalyApr. 17 - July. 12, 2014
He believes that the beauty of art is precisely to make the public aware of what is happening and to change.
People are attracted to art because art inherently has a certain awakening effect. Art fills the void in culture. The artistic experience becomes the last pure land that cherishes the value of one's perspective.
Without the participation of the viewer, a work of art cannot exist. Therefore, Osler's work tries to capture the hearts of everyone in pop and punk, "sensitizing" those who are willing to be impressed by him.
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