JULY – TONY OURSLER – SYDNEY

If Picasso had a digital camera….

The cubist dissection of the face and its radical reassembly along the flattened planes of the canvas opened the way for a new psychological intrusion into the psyche of the sitter. Picasso’s painting of Dora Maar, Buste de femme at chapeau (Dora) 1939 * with its kooky facial architecture, manages to reveal more of the sitters character than the most fastidious realism could possibly account for. And whilst Oursler’s work, with all of its theatre, humour and domestic voyuerism may seem a mile away from Picasso, Oursler’s extraordinary digital sculptures owe much to painting.

However it is Oursler’s ability to implicate the audience in the unfolding drama that so heightens our experience of the work. We are not viewing the work in a binary exchange between object and viewer but are made complicit in his poignant, human and occasionally unsavoury dramas.

As we do with Picasso, we forgive the reconstruction and become seduced by the admonitions, the pleading humanity, the brilliantly engaging babble filled with insight and lunacy, comedy and tragedy.

Fox Jensen is thrilled to present two emblematic works by Oursler. Blue is one of a small group of works made in 2006. It is a sister work to Blue You that is currently on loan to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and this work shares its completely involving and compelling character.

On/Off is one of Oursler’s most distilled and extraordinary works. His talking light bulbs have been installed in museums and cities all over the world and show his capacity as a writer, performer and magician. The monologue touches on issues of surveillance and privacy, It is equal part Orwellian and Trumpian in its timely examination of data manipulation and unseen threats.

– Andrew Jensen, 2019

* Collection Foundation Beyeler, Basel, Switzerland

Museum and Public Collections:
Eli Broad Family Foundaton, Los Angeles
capc Musée d’art Contemporain de Bordeaux, France
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Cartier Foundation, Paris
Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio
Depont Foundation for Contemporary Art, Tilburg, The Netherlands
Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa
Goetz Collection, Munich
Hara Museum, Tokyo, Japan
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. 
JB Speed Museum, Louisville, Kentucky
Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles
Magasin 3, Stockholm
Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas
Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montreal
Musée d’Art Contemporain, Barcelona
Musée d’Art Contemporain, Lyon
Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki
Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, California
Museum of Modern Art, New York
National Museum of Osaka, Japan
Orange County Museum of Art, California
Saatchi Collection, London
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Staatsgalerie Moderner Kunst, Munich
Tate Gallery, London
Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
ZMK/Center for Art & Media, Karlsruhe, Germany
Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts