Tony Oursler: High

Lisson Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition by the American artist Tony Oursler. The show will use both gallery spaces to exhibit new installations and key earlier works. Oursler’s practice explores a complex web of societal constraints and psychological dilemmas. The new body of work developed for this exhibition delves into the real/fantastic morass of obsessive desires and needs, or the "reason" of the irrational.

The new works in this show conjure these psycho-social fractures in tragicomic fashion. Oversized mundane objects and neurotic activities become agents of internal dramas that defy diagnosis. One highly theatricalised tableau will feature a forest of slowly burning columnar cigarettes, the only audio is the eerie amplification of an invisible smoker's inhalation. For another work, Oursler has created a huge hot-red 'sex' cell phone, on which fingers are constantly dialling up images of found, homemade soft-core videos of sexed-up vixens, yet never connecting. These works follow the artist's signature practice of fusing sculptural forms with video. Other works on show will represent something of a departure, as Oursler experiments with more pictorial modes of video presentation. One work will feature a loop projection of a young woman attempting to drink an impossible amount and becoming a fountain whose flow is reversed through the magic of editing.

The exhibition will also feature a selection of key earlier works that will provide a background to the latest developments in Oursler’s practice.