Like a dead sun rotting overhead, Oscar Tuazon’s stained orb drips on the floor of his latest exhibit at Maccarone in New York. Although his broken concrete blocks, bare-bulb fluorescent light, steel panels and cracked glass are the essence of industrial, his rubble has an innate elegance, more akin to Cy Twombly‘s than anything produced by process artists of the 1970s, from Eva Hesse to Richard Serra.
(Tuazon images via)
These sculptures come with texts piped into the galleries. Vito Acconci
reads from his proposal for the Halley II Research Station, Antarctica
of the Mind, and Tuazon reads a monologue about another kind of
architecture, one that he could both climb into and carry in his body.
As Alan Ginsberg wrote in San Jose in 1954, yes, yes/ that’s what/ I
wanted,/ I always wanted,/ I always wanted,/ to return/ to the body/
where I was born.”
Meanwhile, in Seattle, his younger brother Eli Hansen is showing at
Lawrimore Project, and elegant is not the first word that comes to mind.
Tuazon has a brooding poetics with real muscle, but Hansen puts his
muscle to more practical use. His work evokes his youth on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, where he and his brother and friends envisioned themselves as outlaw makers, using any x or y to get high, build a shelter, make a radio and reinvent their lives through scraps, discards and music.
Here’s a piece they built together – Home Brew Bottle Wall, 2008, glass blown by Eli.
Hansen talks about his work on Saturday at noon at Lawrimore. He’s showing at Maccarone in July.
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