OSCAR TUAZON: "Untitled (Leave Me Be)"
STANDARD (OSLO)
PRESS RELEASE
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OSCAR TUAZON
"UNTITLED (LEAVE ME BE)"
02.04.-09.05.2009 / Preview: THURSDAY 02.04.2009 / 19.00-21.00
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"I have been in a Tibetan monestary, flying through a labyrinth of caves in tiny spaces where no human could possibly fit. I wanted to love them and care for them and protect them all. They couldn't take care of one another, they were lost, and I would help them. I started an oil fire. You were examining the rough batton walls, sparsely hung with ceramic tiles and stacked with yellowed books along the low knee wall. Cords were strung throughout the half-lit atrium, a warm aluminium plate covered the boards where they had worn through, the windows (which you later pointed out to be coated plexi) were dampening and translucent. C split glass rails on a scanlan's. A bullet had passed through the length of the house, leaving a splintered crack in the door, a pine balustrade, and finally piercing the stainless steel stovepipe, leaving through the back wall, I followed its path through the cabin.
I pointed my attention to the fire when from the corner of my eye I could see a plastic baggy with white powder hidden in a vitreous candle holder. It was somewhat irresponsible of me to withhold this information, but I did. I felt myself mong out, entering a cavernous vaulted space with a rusting 1963 howard rotavator elevated on a stone plinth. A flimy wash gently spread over the floor, flecks of striated pyrite suspended and tumbling in sulphuric acid, settling against the riffled bottom of a sluice box. You stood along the edge wall of this immense space, reverberating in waves, quietly humming something, and I could clearly see your skull through your pale skin. Somebody who knows later told me that I had seen "The Blue Pearl".
Imagine what it's like inhaling concrete dust. The power is so fine that in small quantities it can be easily absorbed into your bloodstream through your lungs. But some remains, non-integrated, stored in the tissue. Crystalline deposits, concretions, topical rigor mortis. A body dies from the inside, one cell at a time or in clumps and clusters of cells. When you get re-exposed, when you breathe in again, a thin hard layer starts to form: a micro-thin cast of all the chambers of your lungs. Take it out and it looks like a cast of an anthill, the burrow of a small rodent colony, chambers stretching and spilling into each other, fine branches sprung from branches, a fractalized network of petrifying tissue."
- Oscar Tuazon, excerpt from Leave Me Be, Paris, 2009
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Oscar Tuazon (b 1975) lives and works in Paris. This is his second solo exhibition at STANDARD (OSLO). Recent and upcoming solo exhibitions include: David Roberts Foundation, London (2009); Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin (2009); Michele Maccarone, New York (2008); Seattle Art Museum (2008); and the Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2007). Recent group exhibitions include: Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Vigo (Marco), Vigo (2009); Kunsthalle St Gallen, St Gallen (2008); Contemporary Art Museum St Louis, St Louis; Sculpture Center, New York (2008); Kadist Foundation, Paris; and Documenta 12, Kassel (Magazine Projects, under the auspices of Metronome, Paris). Tuazon will together with gallery artist Emily Wardill form STANDARD (OSLO)'s two-artist presentation at the Premiere section of Art Basel in June. Throughout the duration of the exhibition Oscar Tuazon will also have an exhibition at Haugar Vestfold Art Museum in Tønsberg.
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Installation photography: Vegard Kleven
