Sensory Spaces 1 - Oscar Tuazon

The Location

In 2012 Tuazon exhibited the work Totally Wrong in the exhibition ‘Minimal Myth’ at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. One year later Tuazon has his first solo exhibition in the museum. Tuazon: “A couple of years ago I did a very simple work called White Walls - it’s a threshold, a passage through a wall. I was surprised with the result, it made this very mundane act of walking from one room to another into a strangely charged, very conscious experience. It’s just a door, right? But at the same time it’s an artwork that actually allows you to pass through a wall. To me the most interesting objects, or spaces, are like that - simultaneously magical and banal. For the project at Boijmans I want to see how far I can go with this.”

Inspiration

In this work Tuazon responds to the architectural qualities of the space, emphasizing notions of transformation and surprise. The visitor will pose questions when they enter the object, contrary to the characteristic of architecture which is all about offering solutions. This means that the objects ask to be touched, even challenged, by their beholders. In his work Tuazon re-examines the principles of minimalism. Minimalism is all about perfection which means that machinery takes a great place in this process. Tuazon, on the other hand, makes everything with his hands. By doing so, he confronts himself with construction problems and searches for unconventional solutions. To achieve certain architectual solutions, Tuazon finds his inspiration in the 'vonu' community. The 'vonu' choose to live a life that emphasizes finding ways to live beyond the ‘sight, sound and mind of those who will not live-and-let-live’. This means they only use products that are given to them from nature and scraps. Function determines form instead of form follows function.

Each exhibition will be accompanied by a bilingual booklet with an essay by the curator. In October the German artist Sabine Hornig (1964) will be the second artist invited to create a work specially for the gallery.