one structure laid over another, one structure growing inside another,
a plan for a renovation laid over an existing building,
a redevelopment,
two structures fucking one another.”
Being an archetypal exhibition space, Kunsthalle Bern’s big empty halls are somehow still modelled after domestic space, as a kind of home enlarged and magnified (with a grand foyer, a kitchen, a dining room, a master bedroom, a children’s bedroom, a library and a guest room downstairs). Its walls are enlarged and expanded to hold paintings.
It is a structure designed to house artworks—but a structure is never designed to accommodate another structure.
Tuazon’s structure will put holes in the walls—all walls that have a carrying function.
The piece attacks the building—this old bourgeois idea of art at home, the idea of a space for art.
two structures fucking one another
two structures fucking one another
two structures fucking one another
two structures fucking one another
two structures fucking one another
two structures fucking one another
two structures fucking one another
two structures fucking one another
two structures fucking one another
two structures fucking one another
two structures fucking one another
two structures fucking one another
two structures fucking one another
The idea that there could be or can be ever any space for art.
And of course even despite all the effort, it fails. It fails to do anything permanent, to disrupt the single, impossible, eternal condition of an exhibition space: that it remains empty. Somehow the grand effort emphasizes that failure. The piece depends on the building; those holes in the walls will become part of the structural system that supports the new structure. So the struggle for a kind of autonomy is futile anyway, or it’s a false aim. It appears that Tuazon is inspired by the contradictions, which originate in different uses of space, by strategies of coping with limited means or remote places, by parasitic tactics with regard to different economic systems.
He is interested in the resistance and the challenges, which an independent human survivor-instinct can mount against its environment. Tuazon envisions potential dwellings according to a DIY-aesthetics. To him, these dwellings represent maximal freedom, since they can be erected and inhabited independently of organizations and civilizations. His models of autonomy often refer to the most basic strategies and means of survival, such as shelter, food and camouflage. These explorations of alternative and individual ways of life are not meant to be a commentary on the current economic crisis, but they do evoke other currently popular models of remembrance and retrospective reflection, which strive for a simplification of the social order. Oscar Tuazon also works as a writer, publisher and curator, and he could be called one of the most radical sculptors of his time. Tuazon’s artistic practice constitutes a kind of contemporary sculptural bricolage, which is reminiscent of Arte Povera because of its inventive use of natural and industrial materials. In today’s ‘art-system’, which is developed and institutionalized to a larger degree than ever before, such ‘underground’-activities are an impetus to reflect on artistic possibilities that retain
upcoming:
Oscar Tuazon
My Flesh to Your Bare Bones
March 12 - April 24, 2010
Opening Reception: Friday March 12, 6-8PM
Maccarone
630 Greenwich Street NY, NY 10014
tel 212 431 4977
fax 347 394 0043