Tony Oursler Has a Very

Tony Oursler has a very unique way of looking at the world through the lens of art. For example, in 1996 he created a video art exhibition that featured 13 eyeballs that were projected onto globes of white fiberglass. Each eye moved differently and did different things. Some of them wept, others tracked a target, and still others did other things. In addition to these eyeballs there was a sound track that went with them where people were saying different accusatory or pleading comments to those that the eyeballs "looked at."

Also unique to the exhibition were three other pieces of art that dealt with multiple personality disorder as a theme. Many critics found the artwork that dealt with multiple personality disorder to be quite fascinating. Many critics also seem to have the opinion that Oursler is trying to focus in on individuals that are becoming mentally unhinged and having difficulty dealing with the real world. Oursler himself has never specifically said whether this is the case.

When that exhibition was presented in 1996, Oursler was in his thirties. Born in New York in 1957, he created a series that was highly praised and that combined sculpture, video, performance, and conceptual art within the same gallery. Many of the video sculptures that were created by Oursler previously became fixtures within the international exhibition circuit. One of the reasons that he has not been discussed a great deal in the United States is that his work is often much more popular in Europe.

Much of this has to do with the fact that Europeans feel differently about art work and about many other conceptual designs and issues then do Americans. Because of this difference in raising and the way lives are lived in general individuals in Europe are often more receptive to art and design that is difficult to understand and they can better digest much of the art work that Oursler creates. This does not mean to imply that the American people are stupid or that they are uneducated or unworthy when it comes to understanding art. It is simply that European individuals have different ways of looking at the world than do American people, and therefore their appreciation and understanding of artwork is somewhat different from what would be seen in an American observer.

Oursler has been working for quite some time and has also worked with musical and visual artist Mike Kelly since 1978. Both of these individuals started their artistic lives as performers within a musical group entitled the 'Poetics.' They were both also huge fans of fiction writer William S. Burroughs and much of their artistic output builds upon the fiction that he has written.

In 2000, Oursler created a public art exhibition for a series which was called 'target art in the park.' It began in October of 2000 in Madison Square Garden with a nighttime exhibition. The work at that time consisted of ghostly video projections and sounds where faces could be seen on artificial fog, trees, paths, a pond, and surrounding buildings. Interactive viewing of the exhibition was also available online. The project was sponsored by the Target store, and Oursler's work was not the only one that was seen there. It was also not the only work that Oursler did in 2000.

Another exhibition that Oursler created, entitled 'interjection,' is based on a psychological term that is used for subconscious processes where the psyche manages to incorporate various images. This particular show provided a very unique experience for each individual viewer and included exhibitions and videos that owed a great debt to folk art, amateur animation, and middle school plays, as well as a sequence from Hitchcock's Spellbound created by Salvador Dali.

Oursler's work is often very strange to the uneducated in the art world and is sometimes difficult to take, but the work is also vital. It comes from the mind of an individual that truly belongs to the TV generation. He does not have the blanket devotion of an individual normally considered a couch potato, nor is he critically removed from television. He is intimate with television sufficiently to be able to understand how complex the integration of television is into individuals' lives. He then takes this awareness of the television medium and attempts to incorporate it into various works that tell people more about their lives.

Not everyone is comfortable with Oursler's art, however, but this is not something that Oursler has generally allowed to bother him. He began his art work in 1978, and his style has not changed all that much throughout the years. One of the most significant changes that has occurred in his style, however, is the use of newer technology to revisit many of the themes that were seen in his artwork in the past. This is very significant in that it indicates that Oursler has not stopped thinking about the issues that concerned him in the past, and that the feelings that he had for various concerns and ideals still remain.

He has had exhibitions throughout various galleries in the world from 1981 all the way through 1995 and has also had collaborative exhibitions throughout galleries beginning in 1987 and also ending in 1995. Oursler has also been involved with many sound and video projects, most of the major ones beginning in 1985 and ending in 1994. There is much evidence that Oursler is not doing is much work today as he used to but this does not mean that his works are any less quality than they were early on or in the middle of his career.

Generally, Oursler sticks with faces, figures, and what are considered by some to be mobile human dolls. Even though he has experimented with other designs and other ideas in the past, this experimentation has generally yielded results that he was not entirely pleased with. He has often been called "the video doll maker." Most of the other media that he has used has been seen extensively in Japan and Europe, but some of it has made its way to the United States as well. Despite the fact that this other media has been utilized throughout the world, the dissatisfaction that Oursler often had with it remained with him and led him to believe that he could not create exactly what he wanted to create and express himself to the extent that he wished to with this other imagery.