Kohn Gallery

On view now! “Object Poetry,” an active observation and engagement with sculptures that inhabit the lacunae where language lapses. The featured works–spanning performance, kinetics, and assemblage–use sound, light, video, movement and found objects as structural mnemonic devices. Across three “verses,” or participatory environments, the presentation asks, “What possibilities do these forms make actual?” Guided by this central question, adopted from artist, Intermedia theorist, and Fluxus co-founder Dick Higgins, the exhibition engages the viewer as a physical and emotional participant.

Tony Oursler (b. 1957) lives and works in New York, NY. Deeply rooted in a conceptual framework, Oursler conjures multimedia and immersive experiences which combine traditional art making tools with new technologies. Oursler is known for his work with moving images, installation and projection. Referencing a fully networked, digitally assisted future of image and identity production while harking back to the phantasmagoria, camera obscura and psychedelia, Oursler is keenly aware of the viewer as a participant in his work. As a pioneer of video art in early 1970s California and New York, Oursler developed a unique fusion of poetic free-association, stream of consciousness, dramaturgy and radical formal experimentation, employing painting, animation, montage and live action: “My early idea of what could be art for my generation was an exploded TV”.

Artwork: Tony Oursler, RGB2, 1996-97, citizen 30PC projector, VCR videotape, media player, green velvet doll, green velvet pedestal, with sound system, with sound organ and sound system, dimensions variable Michael Kohn Gallery tony oursler