Opening: Thursday 15 March 2018, 6 – 8 pm
Hauser & Wirth Zürich is delighted to present a solo exhibition
of recent paintings by Turner Prize winner Keith Tyson. Created between
2012 and 2018, the works on display explore the varied approaches
towards painting Tyson employs, from conceptual to mythological to
formalist and beyond, and how these methodologies are united in the
final result of paint on a canvas. The exhibition title ‘BIG
DATA’ references Tyson’s ongoing interest in interconnectivity,
universal experiences and the effect of computing and data consumption
on himself and society as a whole over the past several decades.
Since 1975, computers, coding and data have been an inextricable
element of Tyson’s life. From taking apart a motherboard as a teenager
to ‘Artmachine’, a computer Tyson built at the very beginning of his
artistic practice. An algorithm generated combinations of words and
ideas, which Tyson then realised in a multitude of media. The laws of
computer coding are mimicked in Tyson’s artworks through his take on a
supposed rule in conceptual art; that there exists a parenthesis within
which a conceptual artwork can be made.
In ‘The Things that Came to Pass’ (2014 – 2017), eight panels form a
single piece in two elements: eight rules and eight related images
painted above each rule. The rule ‘21 artist gangbang’, a reference to
Internet pornography is also quite simply a citation of 21 artists’
iconic trademarks that meet in an orgy of pictorial consumption. Damien
Hirst’s polka dots meet On Kawara’s date paintings meet Johannes
Vermeer’s ‘Girl With a Pearl Earring.’ Another panel, ‘The 37 Second
Picnic’ is a depiction of a picnic Tyson painted in exactly 37 seconds
while ‘This particular corner at this particular time’ shows exactly
that. The painting in its entirety represents the world Tyson lives in
and sees, what is reflected back to him and what he experiences as part
of a universal and creative network. This work illustrates that though
Tyson’s practice is infused with mathematical and technological process,
it can be viewed through a more playful and personal lens.
In a standalone panel work ‘Big Data’ (2017), the information in the
bottom half of the canvas shows a space ranging from Unknown to Famous,
and African to Eurasian with a and b marking a relatively famous Asian
man and a relatively unknown African man respectively. Tyson found the
portrait of the African man in a charity shop, replicated it and then
painted the likeness of an Asian billionaire in the exact same style.
The painting is everything within the frame, including the diagram and
words even if our minds interpret them as text, since Tyson explores the
relationship between rule and picture co-existing side by side. Also
examined is the potential for an artwork to emerge through a unique
process in the world – in this case, Tyson’s chance encounter with the
painting in a charity shop – and the artist’s appropriation of found
imagery.
Chance or unpredictable occurrences continue to inspire Tyson’s
artworks, most vividly seen in ‘9 Oil Rigs (Any Style)’ (2017 – 2018), a
painting made of nine individually framed canvases. The ‘any style’
comes from a menu in a New York café listing ‘2 Eggs (Any Style)’; the
simple phrase merged with oil rigs in Tyson’s mind as he read the
newspaper during breakfast. The sculptural form of an oil rig is
portrayed in nine different colourful and intense styles. Given the oil
industry is consistently under socio-political and economic
interrogation, the oil rig can be viewed as a charged subject. However,
the work also functions as a painting about the nature of painting
itself. With the select medium of oil paint, Tyson brings together
several components: a horizon line, the unabashed use of colour, the
style in which each rig is painted, the effect of this approach and how
the paint physically rests on the canvas. Tyson has grappled to remain
free of a particular style or genre of painting throughout his career
and remarked, ‘How do you paint the collision of forces that are going
on all the time around you? How do you sum up that complexity and kind
of wonder of the intricacy of things without deadening it to a single
image?’
Tyson’s diverse sources of inspiration also encompass art history
and can be witnessed in a number of his flower paintings. In the same
way a florist would pick and combine blooms from different regions on a
purely aesthetic basis, Tyson chooses assorted painting styles such as
photo-realism, renaissance landscape and abstract expressionism,
arranging them in an energetic composition. ‘Still Life with Rose Vase
and Seashell’ (2015 – 2017) is an example where the riotous frenzy of
colour and composition represent the complexity of life and phenomena.
‘Cyborg 2 (Roses)’ (2018) is a photo-realistic ‘cyborg’ combination of
hand painted oil on aluminium after previous iterations were
photographed and printed.
The most recent work in the exhibition is ‘The Time Machine’ (2018),
a wall spanning painting presenting technological advancements from
1958 (an IBM mainframe computer) to 2018
(Google and Facebook server farms). To Tyson this is his version of a
prehistoric cave painting, a record of the developments in technology
since the mid 20th century and corresponding sociological happenings,
from a peace sign in the 1970s to a Super Mario figure appearing in
1988. The two sides collide in a meeting of negative and positive
depictions as Tyson records society, alluding to dependence on
technology, the methods through which we are informed, and how we
process information and a constant influx of imagery. Throughout the
exhibition, Tyson’s genuine bewonderment at the infinity of possibility
is reflected in his aesthetic and philosophical approach to our
contemporary existence and recent history.