Oscar Tuazon “See Through”
Galerie Eva Presenhuber is pleased to present “See Through,” the gallery’s third solo-exhibition featuring new works by the Los Angeles-based artist Oscar Tuazon.
Oscar Tuazon‘s sculptural oeuvre is situated at the border of art, architecture and technology. His large-scale works – shown in exhibition spaces as well as public space and nature – often seem like functional do-it-yourself structures which were once inhabited or will be made inhabitable soon. In terms of form, Tuazon is close to artists of Minimalism and Land Art, such as Donald Judd or Carl Andre. He goes so far as to copy single works of artists like Richard Serra, but without the ironical distance that characterizes appropriation. The process of copying is rather to be understood as a re-building that reduces the work to its sheer material and potential. Furthermore, Tuazon doesn’t focus on the relation between work and architectural space, but on material, the process of building, and the physical agency of the work itself. Often, the collective process of constructing his large-scale sculptures could be seen as a performance which naturally takes place before the actual work is realized.
In “See Through,” Tuazon borrows a form which condenses various concepts explored in his previous work: the window. He installs massive wooden frames made of spruce, cedar, and plywood, that stand in the middle of the gallery space or directly against the wall. At first glance the sculptures seem minimalistic: geometrical frames that define and order space, and at the same time evoke, like Fred Sandbacks sculptures, larger structures. However, Tuazon transcends minimalism: his windows consist of two parts. One part is transparent with a pane of glass built into it, while the other part is crossed by three wooden bars which belong to the wall of a house. These objects, quite clearly, have a certain function. They are windows that separate inside from outside and, at the same time, are transparent. The title gives account to this main feature of windows. But contrary to minimalist sculptures, which put the focus on the surrounding architecture, Tuazon‘s windows exist as architectural elements themselves– constructed by the artist in the studio.
In the exhibition space, the windows are fundamentally alienated in several ways. First, they are not part of a house. Second, their layout creates doubt about their ability to separate inside and outside – to be tight. Furthermore, they don’t allow to look outside anyway: They are positioned either in the middle of the gallery or on the wall. In their quasi-functionality, they go beyond the way of perceiving space expressed by minimalist artists.
Tuazon’s sculptures are easy to grasp, but it’s difficult to spell out their complexity. As windows, their basic function is to disappear. They should be transparent. At the same time, they are displaced, don’t quite work the way they are supposed to, and so are alienated from their usual function. Ultimately, Tuazon’s objects create their own space, which is not equivalent with the surrounding gallery space. What happens within this new space expands the space itself: What happens between the objects and their perception is left to the exhibition visitors – and even that can’t always be controlled individually.
at Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich
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