ART-PRESENTATION: Tony Oursler-Black Box
For nearly four decades, Tony Oursler has built a multimedia practice exploring the increasingly broad intersection between technology and human behavior. Seemingly nothing has been off-limits in his approach: painting, sculpture, video installation, performance, language, music and sound are among the myriad means through which the artist tackles subjects ranging from government surveillance programs to big data.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts
“Black Box” is the first major museum exhibition in Asia devoted to the full scope of the career of Tony Oursler widely considered to be among the pioneers of American multimedia and video art. “Black Box” was initially scheduled to open on 11/4/2020 as part of the Kaohsiung Spring Arts Festival, but it was postponed until November 2020, and then pushed back a second time to its current dates. Oursler has been consistently redefining moving image and installation art through innovative and diverse methods of incorporating video, sculpture and performance into his practice, breaking video art out of the two-dimensional screen to create unique and transformative moving three-dimensional environment with the use of projections. Black Box reveals his fascination of mystical phenomenon and origin of the camera obscura conjuring immersive experience through technologies of projection, video screens and optical devices. The exhibition includes works such as “Judy” (1994), “Caricature” (2002), “Lock 2,4,6” (2010), “Open Obscura” (2011) and “Spacemen R My Friended” (2016). Among the works on view are the 5D immersive feature film “Imponderable” (2016), in which a story unfolds from the artist’s collection of many newspaper clippings about stage magic, supernatural photography, pseudoscience, and spiritual power. Elsewhere, the grotesque and humorous characters in the Caricatures series derive from explorations into mechanical technology and human emotions. “Imponderable”, the film’s title, suggests the idea of something that cannot be determined with accuracy. The film offers an alternative depiction of modernism that reveals the intersection of technological advancements and occult phenomena over the last two centuries. Presented in a “5-D” cinematic environment utilizing a contemporary form a 19th Century phantasmagoric device, the Pepper’s ghost and a range of sensory effects, “Imponderable” is an immersive feature-length film inspired by Oursler’s own archive of ephemera relating to stage magic, spirit photography, pseudoscience, telekinesis, and other manifestations of the paranormal. Drawing on these objects, the work weaves together a social, spiritual, and empirical history of the virtual image that overlaps with the artist’s own family history. The cast of characters, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Harry Houdini, Mina “Margery” Crandon, and members of Oursler’s family, is portrayed by an eclectic ensemble of artists, musicians, and performers, including Kim Gordon, Jim Fletcher, Keith Sanborn, and Constance DeJong. Bringing together Oursler’s ongoing interest in mysticism, psychedelia, popular culture, and media history, the work uses macabre humor and theatrical surrealism to reflect on the irrational relationship between belief systems and the authenticity of images. Imponderable is presented in conjunction with selections from Oursler’s archive relating to the film. The 5-D film-based experience, explores the conflicting and overlapping belief systems implicit within his grandfather’s engagement with the debunking of paranormal activity.
Info: Curators: Yulin Lee, Tseng Fang-Ling, C0-Curator: Alice Ko Nien-Pu, Assistant Curators: Tsui Tsai-Shan & Su Yu-Wen, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, 80 Meishuguan road, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, R.O.C., Duration: 23/1-16/5/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 11:30-17:30, Sat-Sun 9:30-17:30, www.kmfa.gov.tw
