Art Talk
Disappointments, Surprises and Welcome News
Art reviews from art critics Edward Goldman and Hunter Drohojowska-Philp.
By Edward Goldman • • 4m ListenDisappointments, Surprises and Welcome News
But what was especially disappointing were the videos of hideously contorted faces, that the gallery press release describes as "ghoulish." In the past, I was intrigued and smitten by Tony Oursler's phantasmagorical installations, which I experienced as a portal into a forth dimension. His new works make me think of a street performer contorting his body into an impossible pretzel, expecting me to see it as an existential comment on the human condition.
Looking at his large black and white photographs, documenting each and every microscopic detail of the landscape seen from a hundred feet above, you feel simultaneously like a scientist looking through a microscope as well as a pilot gliding over the parched surface of the earth. In the middle of the gallery there is a huge book-like portfolio of black and white photographs shot from a small plane flying over Los Angeles. Don't leave the exhibition without asking the gallery assistant to turn the pages slowly. Don't feel shy. Tell them I told you so. Los Angeles, with its tangled freeways and huge expansion of industrial landscape, has never looked more mysterious than in these images, resembling engraved illustrations from centuries old books.
Michael Light "Some Dry Space"
Tony Oursler