Getting blurry and cross-eyed at Tauba Auerbach's Deitch Projects exhibitBy Spencer Young
SF-gone-NY artist Tauba Auerbach, who has a keen obsession with language systems and structures, departs (slightly) from the well-worn two-tones of her 50/50 series in the current anagrammatically-titled exhibit "HERE AND NOW/AND NOWHERE." Showcased at the ever-so-hip Deitch Projects, these new works dazzle with optical trickery and viewer interaction. The stars of the show (aside from the elephant-like organ that stands obtrusively in the gallery's center) are the seemingly innocuous "Crumple Paintings" that hang all the way in the back. I say seemingly because at first glance the canvases look crumpled, but deeper inspection of their disorienting visual static reveals they are rife with polka dots.
In a previous exhibit, Auerbach explained this work as a confrontation of the "threshold between order and chaos, or between pattern and randomness," wherein "it's never a discreet line" and "maybe these states overlap or maybe they don't really exist in a pure way." She also suggests a 2-D and 3-D interactive experience new to her work that develops between viewer and object. Hence the need to be near or far to see both sides.
Tauba Auerbach, Crumple VII, 2009, acrylic and inkjet on canvas, 96 x 128 inches
If I understand correctly, from a distance the "Crumple Paintings" are meant to represent chaos/randomness and a contoured 3-D experience, but up close bring orderliness/pattern, flat/2-D. However, neither is necessarily accurate, because it's all a matter of perspective, based on where you're standing. In other words, it's all relative. Check. But isn't this too easy and rigid of an analysis -- much like the clean nicety of an anagram where nothing gets left out, just rearranged? If so, isn't it then a return to the same formulaic structure of her 50/50 pattern pieces? Or has a blurring evolved between the two, as exemplified in the actual visual blur that happens when physically approaching the work?
In any case, everything in Auerbach's work seems to get tied to binary in some way or another vis-รก-vis order/chaos, pattern/randomness, here/nowhere, past/present or 2-D/3-D. Even her TV static-derived "Static Photographs," which she says were meant to capture "authentic randomness (oxymoron?)," become static (read: fixed) through the "emergence of pattern."
Two of Tauba Auerbach's "Static Paintings." Photo by Spencer Young.
If "the collapsing of two conflicting states is the central theme of "HERE AND NOW/AND NOWHERE," then what emerges from or transcends the collapse? (I now find this question eerily analogous to the day I saw the exhibition, September 11.) In the midst and mist of competing forces and their subsequent destruction, are we only left with the stasis of static in Auerbach's work? The ol' checker board, if you will?
Thankfully, the exhibition included a big distraction from these binary quandaries and headaches: lilting fairytale songs played by the lovely elfin-costumed Auerbach and a friend. The organ's blows and bellows soothed the soul. Err...except, come to find out, the instrument operates off interdependence as well; each player provides foot-pumped air to sound the other's notes, which themselves are split half and half! Even their costumes go together -- the backs of their shoes connect like puzzle pieces! Ahhhhhhhh! The duality!
HERE AND NOW/AND NOWHERE
Through October 17th
Deitch Projects
18 Wooster Street, NY
www.deitch.com
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