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Tony Oursler
Eye in the Sky, 1997
Sony CPJ 200 projector, videotape, VCR, white acrylic paint on fiberglass sphere
18 inches diameter, 20 minutes
performance by Mary N.
courtesy Metro Pictures, New York
Tony Oursler's recent video projections examine the effects on human psychology of our mass media-oriented society. After studying at the California Institute for the Arts, Oursler found video an appropriate medium in which to comment on television and the generation raised on it. In asking whether our popular obsession with television indeed has negative effects, Oursler's video sculpture takes us to the point where media consumption and psychosis often converge.
Eye in the Sky features a fiberglass sphere onto which is projected a single eye watching television. Although the rest of the body is not visible, we can hear the sounds of compulsive channel surfing. Without the emotive clues of facial expressions or gestures, we focus on the eye as an orifice, twitching as it gulps weather forecasts, commercials, sitcoms and game shows. For Oursler, the fragmentary nature of the piece -- the disembodied eye, the reflected television screen and the rapidly changing channels -- parallels features of mental illnesses that signal the disintegration of the personality and the inability of the individual to identify with and function in the real world.
Oursler breaks down the traditional boundaries between media by creating a freestanding video sculpture. Eye in the Sky was facilitated by the recent development of miniature LCD projectors that free the image from the cumbersome boundaries of the video monitor, the conventional film screen or the picture frame. Like some strange creature from a science fiction film or surrealist dream sequence, Oursler's eye is a metaphor for the human condition in a media-saturated age.
Judith Bumpus, "Video's Puppet Master," Contemporary Visual Arts 15 (1997): 38-43.
Deborah Rothschild, Introjection: Tony Oursler Mid-Career Survey 1976-1999, (Williamstown: Williams College Museum of Art, 1999.)
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