Oscar Tuazon

Video: Oscar Tuazon

Born 1975 in Seattle
Lives and Works in Paris 

Oscar Tuazon’s sculpture is composed of a series of modular parts, identical in exterior dimensions and volume, but individually distinguished by each structure’s building materials. Informed by architecture’s ancillary spaces—stairways, doorjambs, window frames, shower stalls—the artist draws attention to the spaces we inhabit daily but almost always overlook. Every module is designed to provide the ideal amount of space to accommodate a single person at a time. In the gallery these structures mingle and intersect, crowding together in a formless tangle that is almost impossible to take in all at once.

Tuazon is as interested in the inherent formlessness of his structures as he is in their utility. For Hire was made to be transformed into a runway for a fashion show that fellow Biennial artist K8 Hardy will stage in May. This function determined Tuazon’s constraints in both design—compelling him to create components that could be easily dismantled, transported, and reconfigured—and construction, requiring materials strong enough to support the models’ weight, and fixtures for lights to illuminate the show. When the catwalk has served its purpose, the modules will be disassembled and again installed in the galleries, possibly in a new arrangement or in other locations throughout the exhibition. As Tuazon describes his work, “This to me is the most exciting—that it’s literally a sculpture without definitive form.”