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...
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.
Because of this, he went back to what he was familiar with and what he was renowned for and the work that he was doing as late as 2003 generally involved these mobile dolls and the video information that he needed to give them expressions, voices, and other disturbing imagery that would be seen by those that viewed his work. Some critics discuss Oursler's work as being low-budget and low-tech expressionistic theater, since much of what Oursler creates is considered to be very primitive and sometimes grotesque as well. There is a sensibility to the handmade pieces that Oursler often exhibits but there are also psychodramatic landscapes that force the reader to look at much of Oursler's work from a pop culture standpoint.
There is no reason to believe that this pop culture standpoint is in any way a problem for Oursler or for the people that view his work. Instead, the idea that much of his work applies to pop culture is only an observation that many critics note. Much of this comes from the abstractness of a lot of Oursler's work. Even though it is easy to see what the actual images are in the work, some of the work does not tie itself together very clearly and therefore it may be confusing to understand. Despite this, however, Oursler's work is very strong and very interesting to behold. It has a richness, an openness, and an honesty that many other artist's work does not possess for one reason or another, and one can tell that Oursler is working and creating to please himself, not to please…
