ART CITIES:Zurich- Oscar Tuazon

Oscar Tuazon works with natural and industrial materials to create inventive and often functional objects, structures, and installations that can be used, occupied, or otherwise engaged by viewers. With a strong interest in and influence from architecture and minimalism, Tuazon turns both disciplines on their heads as he mangles, twists, combines, and connects steel, glass, and concrete as well as two-by-fours, tree trunks, and found objects.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Galerie Eva Presenhuber Archive

In his solo exhibition “See Through” at the Galerie Eva Presenhuber in Zurich Oscar Tuazon presents new works. Inspired by what he calls “Outlaw architecture”, Tuazon channels the extreme DIY and freethinking of hippy survivalists who decide to go off-grid. If his industrial materials suggest a minimalistic stress on concept over making, he’s just as interested in the physical side of sculpture. He starts off with a sketch, chain-sawing wood, developing ideas and patching up problems on the hoof. In the exhibition the artist borrows a form which condenses various concepts explored in his previous work, the window. He installs massive wooden frames that stand in the middle of the gallery space or directly against the wall. At first glance the sculptures seem minimalistic, geometrical frames that define and order space, and at the same time evoke larger structures. In terms of form, Tuazon is close to artists of Minimalism and Land Art, such as Donald Judd or Carl Andre. He goes so far as to copy single works of artists like Richard Serra, but without the ironical distance that characterizes appropriation. The process of copying is rather to be understood as a re-building that reduces the work to its sheer material and potential. Furthermore, Tuazon doesn’t focus on the relation between work and architectural space, but on material, the process of building, and the physical agency of the work itself. Often, the collective process of constructing his large-scale sculptures could be seen as a performance which naturally takes place before the actual work is realized. As muscular and uncompromising as it can first appear, Tuazon’s work is ephemeral. Like the hippy idealists defining their environment on their own terms, the artist will always have to pack up and move on. Yet while they stand, pushing at walls and ceilings and taking over space, these makeshift constructions remind us of the imaginative struggle to make what we want of the world, no matter what rules and boundaries seem to press down on us.

Info: Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Löwenbräu Areal, Limmatstrasse 270, 2nd Floor, Zurich, Duration: 18/2-25/3/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 11:00-18:00, Sat 11:00-17:00, https://presenhuber.com