I selected my Graduate School for a number of reasons, but mostly because Tony Oursler was a faculty member. I knew that Tony and I would become fast friends and cohorts. I had a number of fantasies of our meeting and how he would influence my education: Tony as the nurturing yet rigorous advisor, Tony and I contemplating the art world over a cup of coffee, Tony and I knocking back a whiskey at an Irish Pub after a particularly lively student critique, Tony hooking me up with his New York Gallery, and so on.

Imagine my disappointment when I arrived to Boston and found that Tony had left his teaching position to follow his extremely hot art career. The salt in the wound, of course, was the number of instructors who pointed out how Tony would have liked me and took me under his wing. * Sigh *

So it is with much excitement, eagerness and regret that I visit a Tony Oursler exhibition. As it so happens, both he and Nayland Blake are exhibiting at Gallery Paule Anglim through May 5, 2007.

Tony Oursler, Purple Resonant Dust, 2006
fiberglas sculpture, projector, dvd plaver
Courtesy Paule Anglim Gallery

The largest and most foreboding Tony Oursler artwork is “Purple Resonant Dust” a large 50-inch spherical lumpy ball of painted fiberglass. Projected onto this suspended sculptural canvas is a churning array of smoke, eyes, lips, feet and hands. Body parts emerge from the darkness like a crystal ball, moving from foreground to background and disappearing silently. Words spoken from periodic projected lips are amplified on two small speakers mounted on either side of the piece. The vision itself is part celestial nebula or part science fiction horror film. I immediately envisioned a talking evil brain or the 1950s film “The Blob”, where space age goo dissolves everyone in its path, leaving small body parts floating in its jelly-like core.

Installed in a circle around “Purple Resonant Dust” are five satellite sculptures that reminisce planets or worms. Not only are the fiberglass shapes more sophisticated than earlier works, but the videos are as well. “Untethered Worms” features talking mouths, blinking eyes and swirling water. The constant drone of audio from all pieces is both ominous and humorous. Sometimes the audio will ebb and flows, making one sculpture’s volume overpower the others.

To really hear the sound for individual artworks, visitors have to get close to the speakers. I heard a few words, including “dark matter,” “electrons”, “I love you”, “accelerator”, “DNA”, “atom-smasher”, “alcoholic disaster”, “radioactive isotope”, “words that you said can’t get out of my head”. In some ways it was like a spoken word performance spliced together from a high school science textbook and angst teenage poetry. In either case the pieces and the audio are the perfect Frankenstein fusion between the human and planetary body.

I entered another room to view an exhibition of seven pieces by Nayland Blake aptly titled “Three photographs, three mirrors, a sculpture and a sign”. I immediately fell in love with “Mirror 1” and “Mirror 2”. Both are made from colored plexi glass, plexi mirror and a metal frame. The plexi glass is scratched in various ways, creating an opaque screen to the mirror behind it. Both layers have small holes drilled into their surface, creating another opportunity for transparency and reflection. I was extremely taken with both the simplicity and complexity of their aesthetics, as well as the opportunity for self-examination and narcissism.

My favorite, though, was “Bad Sign”. A wooden sign hangs from metal hardware from the wall as if advertising the door of a store. Painted on one side is “On” and “No”. On the other “Just”, “RETURN” and “OK?”. From the sign hangs a yellow ribbon and a chain. Attached to the ribbon is a piece of cardboard with a charcoal drawing of a sawed off tree trunk with a small sign in it’s base that reads “Pip Squeak” (or was it “Pip Squek”?) and two banners over the trunk in which the letters spell out “OW”. Attached to the chain is a small log, with the word FLOAT burned into its base. The symbolism of the objects and how they are connected together bring forth a number of interpretations on relationships, dependency, dominance and violence. Much like a Rorschach text, how the pieces are linked may say just as much about the viewer as the artist.

While Tony Oursler is able to grab one immediately with his signature video and sound, I believe it is Nayland Blake’s mix of materials and subtle coding to personal relationships that will keep me pondering for some time. I believe Nayland and I should meet up for a cup of coffee sometime and hash it out.