Tony Ousler

After the panel presentation we have researched Tony Ousler:

"Tony Oursler (New York 1957) is one of the most innovative and interesting contemporary artists. He trained at the California Institute for the Arts, where he studied under John Baldessari and was a fellow student of the artist Mike Kelley, with whom, in 1977, he created a group, The Poetics, and with whom he also collaborated in Documenta X in Kassel with the work The Poetics Project, an installation that reviewed the decades of the seventies and eighties through projections, interviews and, especially, pop-rock music. His artistic career has been distinguished by his skill in the use of the new languages of the media, from his early videos to his disturbing, unsettling figurative works of the early nineties, represented by his well-known "talking heads": works consisting of rag dolls or puppets onto which previously-made recordings are projected, with crying or shouts or absurd monologues, producing a strong emotional impact on the spectator. The subjects that Oursler tackles most frequently focus critically on environmental and biological pollution, the neuroses of modern life, the effects of television, and psychological illnesses. The exhibition, prepared in close collaboration with the artist, consists of an exhaustive selection of his talking heads, works on paper, photographs made in the last few years, and pieces made recently."

(www.tonyousler.com)

Although the themes and overall effect that he wants to convey is quite different from ours, aesthetically it has some resemblances and can definitely influence our work.

What i find most impressive of his work is the relative simplicity and straight forwardness of the people represented. His characters are simpler than rag dolls, with a roundish shape for the head and clothes of even just some fabric as the body, and yet they feel more real and alive than any detailed sculpture.

So it would be great to be able to get such a strong effect for our piece.

Also, after seeing his work I feel that aesthetically our project is a less interesting version of his work, so I'd like to distance it a bit from this.