predictive empath
December 26th, 2018 - February 10th, 2019
Baldwin Gallery, Aspen
Baldwin Gallery is pleased to announce its third show with Tony Oursler, an internationally acclaimed video-sculptor. In recent years, Oursler’s work has seen a vivid revival of his interest in painting and drawing, and in the new wall mounted video pieces there is a textural focus, that seeks to seamlessly subsume the video in the paint, swirling the two in mixed media. The current show comprises two elements. The first, are Rorschach portraits: like psychic hunting trophies, they each present an animalian butterfly-collection funhouse reflection of a sputtering subconscious; self-aware machines slouching (seasonally) towards Bethlehem, ready to be born. The balance of the show continues Oursler’s exploration of the magical seduction of the human gaze, this time peering forward from neural network derived patterns in facial recognition algorithm. Some whisper mystical fortune teller secrets, but the surfaces of the works are bright and painterly, exploring surface, texture, and mark-making that drifts in and out of focus, in line erasing dialogue, with the video around them. Since the mid-1970s, Oursler has been a pioneer in new media, and proponent of A.I. starpower. Oursler is widely considered one of the most significant leaders in the field of video art.