ART CITIES: Vienna-Oscar Tuazon
Oscar Tuazon works with natural and industrial materials to create inventive objects, structures, and installations that can be used, occupied, or otherwise engaged by viewers. With a strong interest in and influence from architecture and minimalism, Tuazon turns both disciplines on their heads as he mangles, twists, combines, and connects steel, glass, and concrete as well as two-by-fours, tree trunks, and found objects. Tuazon produces objects and environments that draw out humanity’s relationship to buildings, interior and exterior spaces, and other objects and structures.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: fjk3 Archive
Oscar Tuazon’s work has roots in minimalism, conceptualism, and architecture, and has a direct relationship with both the site in which it is presented, as well as with the viewer, often through physical engagement. Although he identifies primarily as a sculptor and his work is informed by minimalist strategies, Tuazon’s practice occupies a position between architecture and activism, and his concern is with relationality and presence over purity in form. Made with a combination of industrial and natural materials such as wood, concrete, glass, steel, and piping, his works, often large-scale installations, consist of structures that foreground their own means of construction. He considers a sculptural installation as homologous to a house: both are continuously built, repaired, and maintained. By extension, the act of inhabiting or occupying a space functions as a kind of artistic production, serving as the undercurrent of his predominantly site-specific practice. Oscar Tuazon’s first solo exhibition in Austria, entitled “Words of Water” showcases works that relate to the social space and the public with natural and industrial materials such as wood, stone, metal and concrete. Based on architectural approaches and do-it-yourself strategies, he realizes structures that move between functional buildings and sculpture. Many of Tuazon’s projects are inspired by alternative and utopian architectures of the 1960s and 1970s and early eco-efficient and self-sufficient living models. Tuazon explores these architectural approaches to test their potential for today, not only in terms of the underlying technological principles, but also in terms of alternative uses of space and models of subjectivity. In addition to new works by Tuazon, the exhibition presents his large-scale project “Water School”, which has been running since 2016 and examines the dynamics and power games that govern access to land, water and infrastructure. Vienna made history 150 years ago with its visionary project of a Spring Water Main. While the city’s supply of spring water is secured for the future, water has long been a highly contested resource elsewhere. With this project, Tuazon and collaborators explore the dynamics and power plays that regulate access to land, water, and infrastructures. In 2018, Tuazon founded the Los Angeles Water School (LAWS) as an educational centre focusing on water as the connective tissue between people and their surroundings. Since then, it has also opened in other locations through exhibitions and social work. The physical structure of the “Water School” is based on a design for a “Zome House” (1969-1972) by the architects and engineers Holly and Steve Baer, an early radical design based on the use of passive solar energy. As the artist explains the project, “Water School moves, following water as it cycles across vast geographies, linking mountains to oceans and subterranean aquifers to the skies above them. Water School is a mobile architecture, learning from the fluidity of its medium and the collaborative process of its construction.”
Photo: Oscar Tuazon, Water Map (Lake Itasca), 2023. Bergen Kunsthall. Courtesy Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Photo: Thor Brødreskift
Info: fjk3–Contemporary Art Space, Franz-Josefs-Kai 3, Vienna, Austria, Duration: 11/10/2024-9/2/2025, Days & Hours: Wed-Thu & Sat-Sun 10:00-18:00, Fri 12:00-20:00, https://fjk3.com/
