Tony Oursler, 2015. Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, Hong Kong and New York
Strange faces are popping up inside New York's Lehmann Maupin gallery. On a series of giant, aluminum panels, their visages covered in dotted lines, polka dots, and facial recognition-style geometries, they blink, move their mouths, and stare back at you. These are the new works by Tony Oursler, a new media pioneer whose conceptual practice emerged alongside those of Mike Kelly, John Miller, and other artists who came up in the 1980s CalArts scene under John Baldessari. At his fifth solo show with the gallery, his pieces are relevant-as-ever, exploring the ever-blurring relationships between humans and machines as we dig deeper into technologies like algorithmic facial recognition and electronic profiling.
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How much—or little—information do we need to read emotions? How much to understand identity? And how will our machines—the screens constantly staring back as we stare at them day in and day out—ever be able to reckon with us reasonably? These are the complex questions at the core of the show, an open invitation from the artist to the viewer to "glimpse themselves from another perspective, that of the machines we have recently created.”Oursler's most recent works are stark. Take, for instance, the artist's eerie projections on the walls of an Amsterdam church, his two-headed David Bowie doll, or the familiar yet unfamiliar faces that appeared in London's Lisson Gallery. They give a face to the omnipresent angst of a world where, be they humans or machines, someone's always watching. Oursler's works, your feelings towards them, and this webpage looking back at you—they're all just cold calculations. Just be careful yours don't give too much away.
Tony Oursler, 2015. Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, Hong Kong and New York
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