For Tony Oursler, modern art also means modern technology: The American photographer, installation and video artist is a master at employing moving pictures for his artistic visions. He made his explosive breakthrough with this in the 1990s and has established himself today as one of the most important representatives of American contemporary art.
(...) Continue readingTony Oursler – Art student, punk musician and video artist
Tony Oursler was born in 1957 in New York. He spent his childhood in Nyack in Rockland County, not far from the birthplace and home of Edward Hopper, the master of Realism and the great chronicler of American civilisation. He studied at the California Institute for the Arts, CalArts for short, where his teachers included John Baldessari and Laurie Anderson and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1979. Two years prior to that, he founded the punk band ‘Poetic’ with fellow student Mikey Kelley; the band continued until 1983 and was the subject of an artistic contribution at Documenta X in Kassel in 1997. In the early 1980s, Tony Oursler returned to the East Coast and opened his own studio in New York, which was shortly followed by his first solo exhibition in 1981 and succeeded by many more in the great art metropoles of the world. Oursler celebrated his first artistic successes with experimental video films such as ‘The Loner’ in 1980, and ‘EVOL’ in 1984, in which he combined stop motion animation, painted scenery, optical special effects, and a suitably selected soundtrack.
Ground-breaking installation art with dolls and projections
Tony Oursler wrote art history when he freed the medium of video from the tight frame of the hitherto customary screen and gave it an unprecedented expanse by means of modern projection technology. He first used this technique in 1991 for his installation ‘The Watching’ at Documenta 9 in Kassel, as well as a further characteristic element of his art: the so-called ‘Dummy’, a shapeless doll-like construction onto which he projected video recordings of faces and bodies, accompanied by solemnly theatrical monologues. With this innovative method, which Tony Oursler continued to refine, the artist quickly rose to become a celebrated shooting star of the 1990s. Despite this focus and highlight, Oursler’s art cannot be limited to video installations but is, on the contrary, very wide ranging: Drawings in a figurative-expressive style can be found in his extensive repertoire, as well as photographs, performances, and video collages.
Friendship and collaboration with David Bowie
Tony Oursler also worked with other greats of the art scene, mostly musicians – his collaborative projects with the pop icon David Bowie caused quite a stir. Oursler produced video films to be played in the background during the jubilee concert for Bowie’s 5oth birthday. They formed a long-standing friendship, with Oursler also creating the video to Bowie’s single ‘Where Are We Now?’. He collaborated many times with the performance artist Constance DeJong and Stephen Vitiello, most notably on the work ‘Fantastic Prayers’ which was created over several years and published in its entirety on CD-ROM. Tony Oursler has a keen interest in fantasy and the occult, collects books about psychics, demonology, sorcery and legendary places, and, according to the artist himself, owns one of the most comprehensive collections of ghost photographs. Tony Oursler lives and works primarily in New York and is married to the painter Jacqueline Humphries.
Tony Oursler - Works that have already been sold at Kunsthaus Lempertz:
