The Art Guys, Waste Stream (Video Trashcan), 2004. Currently on view in the group show "Ready-Made" at the Yvon Lambert Project Space, NY. The mouth in the trashcan strains to maintain its gaping rictus in the jittery video loop; the effect of looking down into the trash-lined "bunghole" is obscene in the best Bataillean sense. The show contains few actual ready-mades; this is an art gallery after all, and people want to see craft. Cady Noland, for example, is represented by one of her late fabricated aluminum cutout pieces and not her early found junk.
Very Tony Oursler. Obscene in a wonderful way, yes.
I didn't think of Tony Oursler (it's a little monitor in the trash, not a projection) but it's in the same family. But has Oursler done anything this dark, banal, or darkly banal? I always find his faces to be creepy/goofy.
Hard to discuss without both of us seeing the actual (moving) object, I realize.
There was a piece installed upstairs at Metroworks like 2 years ago (and it was installed for quite some time), with 3 faces projected on an amorphous sort of blob. The faces would shift from being either slightly disfigured and disturbed, to really perversely hysterical. They'd scream inappropriate things that were borderline hilarious because of their lack of context. Words like "rape," "help meeee," and all manners of grunts and squawks would emit from the speakers behind the projection surface. It had an interesting effect in which it would totally tug at the emotional strings, playing "hot" words to which we're sort of trained to elicit an emotional response.
Formally, the gaping mouth in the reproductions you posted reminds me of what Oursler's facial projections look like--in their fragmentation and decontextualization. The implied but still underlying obscenity is sort of there, too.
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The Art Guys, Waste Stream (Video Trashcan), 2004. Currently on view in the group show "Ready-Made" at the Yvon Lambert Project Space, NY. The mouth in the trashcan strains to maintain its gaping rictus in the jittery video loop; the effect of looking down into the trash-lined "bunghole" is obscene in the best Bataillean sense. The show contains few actual ready-mades; this is an art gallery after all, and people want to see craft. Cady Noland, for example, is represented by one of her late fabricated aluminum cutout pieces and not her early found junk.
- tom moody 7-13-2007 11:40 am
Very Tony Oursler. Obscene in a wonderful way, yes.
- bxk (guest) 7-14-2007 12:12 am
I didn't think of Tony Oursler (it's a little monitor in the trash, not a projection) but it's in the same family. But has Oursler done anything this dark, banal, or darkly banal? I always find his faces to be creepy/goofy.
Hard to discuss without both of us seeing the actual (moving) object, I realize.
- tom moody 7-14-2007 2:38 am
There was a piece installed upstairs at Metroworks like 2 years ago (and it was installed for quite some time), with 3 faces projected on an amorphous sort of blob. The faces would shift from being either slightly disfigured and disturbed, to really perversely hysterical. They'd scream inappropriate things that were borderline hilarious because of their lack of context. Words like "rape," "help meeee," and all manners of grunts and squawks would emit from the speakers behind the projection surface. It had an interesting effect in which it would totally tug at the emotional strings, playing "hot" words to which we're sort of trained to elicit an emotional response.
Formally, the gaping mouth in the reproductions you posted reminds me of what Oursler's facial projections look like--in their fragmentation and decontextualization. The implied but still underlying obscenity is sort of there, too.
- bxk (guest) 7-14-2007 6:36 am