Tony Oursler

Tony Oursler is an American artist born in 1957.

After Graduating from the California Institute of Arts, Oursler started to work primarily with video and installation.

He truly revolutionized certain aspects of projection by surpassing the frame of the screen. Oursler uses di erent mediums such as video, lm, photography, handmade objects, sculpture, computers, the web, and also elaborate soundtracks. e visual sensations of the viewer are heightened as the artist ingenuously occupies space with these projections.

These confusing, enigmatic, and obsessive virtual characters deliver a message, and present a parable of miscommunication.

The artist manages to create a sensory universe that raises the question of human and non-human, and tries to reproduce the emotions of the human face onto a monstrous or inanimate object. ey appear as puzzles that appeal to all our senses, and manage to awaken a certain tenderness and compassion for the human race.

Signature works have been Oursler’s 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.

Oursler‘s work has exhibited in many prestigious institutions including the Walker Art Center, Min- neapolis, Documenta VIII and IX in Kassel, Museum of Modern Art in New York, Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Sculpture Projects in Munster, Museum Ludwig in Cologne, the Hirshhorn Museum, in Washington D.C., and Tate Liverpool.

Text by Céline Fribourg

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