Introjection: Tony Oursler Mid-Career Survey

Introjection marks the first mid-career survey of the internationally recognized video artist Tony Oursler. Plumbing popular and punk culture for the twisted icons that structure our collective unconscious, Oursler creates fragmentary images and scenes that might belong to the hallucinations of a delinquent adolescent on a bad trip. The viewer is left to imagine what ungodly narrative was frozen in time to create such surreal, but somehow uncomfortably familiar, mayhem. Though darkly humorous, his work, known to most for his use of sculptural rag dolls onto which he projects the video image of a human face, delves deeply into the question of how the twinned forces of sex and violence, gender and power function in our culture. This catalogue traces the evolution of Oursler's career from early single channel videos through his current mixed-media installations and experiments in digital media. Combining sculpture, video, performance, and text, Oursler's work addresses complex contemporary issueswith empathy, insight, and wit. Also included are four critical essays, two interviews, an essay by the artist as well as a comprehensive exhibition history and bibliography.Deborah Menaker Rothschild is the author of 'Introjection: Tony Oursler Mid-Career Survey', published 2000 under ISBN 9780913697252 and ISBN 0913697257.