Words fail me when trying to describe the amazing work of mixed-media artist Tauba Auerbach. I came across Auerbach’s work recently at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where she exhibited works as a 2008 recipient of the SECA (Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art) Awards.
The SECA Awards program summarises Auerbach’s work by stating that ‘Auerbach investigates the logic of representational systems in series of drawings, prints, painting and mixed-media works that isolate symbols drawn from a range of communicative forms, including the Latin alphabet, Morse code, and even the patterns of television static.’
Auerbach explores the visual by-products of digital and analogue broadcasting in her work.
She often uses typographic or numerical symbols, words and figures to create meaning, such as the anagrams below.
The intent behind Auerbach’s work is quite fascinating – that is, to almost repurpose existing symbols of communication. In an interview published in the 2008 SECA catalogue, Auerbach says: ‘Initially, I valued being a kind of Luddite and doing everything by hand. Craft is dying and this is really upsetting to me. I blamed technology, but I’ve changed my mind about that now… these things are not mutually exclusive… In looking at the material of what is behind anything digitized — ones and zeros, or a signal and then the absence of a signal — I’ve come to feel that the system is prohibitively absolute. It’s a simple idea of something being there or not being there, and that’s what continues to fascinate me.’
Do check out taubaauerbach.com for more of Tauba’s beautiful work (and some very cool web design to boot).