Maureen Paley is pleased to announce a new exhibition at the gallery that brings together the work of Gardar Eide Einarsson and Oscar Tuazon. The artists have been friends and collaborators for many years having met on the Whitney Program in 2001. Their shared interest in the re-appropriation, assemblage and abstraction of political imagery and information has brought their work together through various projects and exhibitions. This will be Gardar Eide Einarsson’s third exhibition at the gallery and the first time that Oscar Tuazon’s work will be shown at Maureen Paley.

The following text is taken from an exchange between the artists as they discussed their plans for the exhibition:

Gardar Eide Einarsson

I see both our work as an attempt to use a formal language as a kind of Trojan horse for other discourses. In my work there is a constant levelling of images from disparate sources (details from books, comic books, posters for lectures, long obsolete software manuals, CIA manuals, advertisements) - tearing them from their original context and forcing them to blend into each other, thereby constructing other narratives. This flattening seems problematically inherent in how information is dissipated today (as evidenced in the crossfire of accusations of fake news and alternative facts) but perhaps it is possible to make it serve counter-hegemonic purposes. This way for me to relate to source imagery has always seemed to me parallel to your use of physical materials, hot-wiring them and cobbling them together to create new meaning.

Oscar Tuazon

Editing, like sculpture, is cutting. Working with you, and in response to your work, allows me to experience the power of cutting into the fabric of the present. The contemporary political situation requires urgent response, by everyone, globally, right now. Art is utilitarian, this is a tool anyone can use. Even better, it is something anyone can do. Make a cut. That’s the feeling I have working on this project right now, a fervent and irrational belief in the urgency of art and its utility.

For me that’s what has propelled the works in this show … to cut reality apart and reassemble it. I’ve tried to use what’s in front of me, working with what I’ve got, what I see right now: flags at Standing Rock; game camera photos of hunters walking around my house; protector architecture; weapons and structures of defense against them; my friends, my body. You do that, and it’s why we’ve worked with each other for fifteen years - because in the space between two people words have real meaning. Words write reality, and in that space everything is permitted; anything is possible.

Gardar Eide Einarsson (b. 1976, Oslo) currently lives and works in Tokyo. Recent solo exhibitions include A madman, a patient,
a condemned man, a worker or a schoolboy, AROS, Aarhus, Denmark, 2015; Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, 2013; Power Has a Fragrance, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden and Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany,2011; The Modern Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, 2009; Kunstverein Frankfurt, Centre d'Art Contemporain, Geneva, 2007. Recent group exhibitions include No Man is an Island - The Satanic Verses, AROS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Denmark, 2016; Colección Jumex, In Girum Imus Nocte et Consumimur Igni, Museo Jumex, Mexico City, Mexico, Cannibalism? On Appropriation in Art, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland, Taguchi Hiroshi Art Collection; A Walk around the Contemporary Art World after Paradigm Shift, The Museum of Fine Arts, Gifu, Japan, 2014; The Crime Was Almost Perfect travelling from Witte De With, Rotterdam to PAC Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea, Milan, and El Teatro Del Mundo/The Theatre of the World, Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City, 2014; Take Liberty, The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo; Moderna Museet Collection / Unpainted Paintings, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 2014; Lies about Painting, Moderna Museet, Malmö, 2013; To be with art is all we ask, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, 2012; Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto, 2011; Sydney Biennial, Sydney, 2010; Whitney Biennial 2008, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2008; 9th International Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul and Populism, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 2005.

Oscar Tuazon (b. 1975, Seattle) currently lives and works in Los Angeles. In 2017, Oscar Tuazon’s work will be presented as part of Skulptur Projekte Münster, Germany, in 2017 (forthcoming). Recent solo exhibitions include: Oscar Tuazon, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA 2016; Break the Glass, Castro, Antiparos, Greece, Studio, Le Consortium, Dijon, France and This Won't Take Long, Paradise Garage, Los Angeles, USA, 2015; Alone in an Empty Room, Museum Ludwig, Köln, Germany 2014 White Walls, Sensory Spaces, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands and Spasms of Misuse, Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin, Germany, 2013; Centre d'édition contemporaine, Geneva, Switzerland, 2012; Kunsthalle Bern, Bern, Switzerland. 2010. Recent group shows include: Beaufort beyond borders, Het Zwin, Belgium, 2015; The Promise, Arnolfini, Bristol, UK, 2014; Whitney Biennial 2012, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, USA, 2012; The Language of Less, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL, USA, 2011; ILLUMInations (curated by Bice Curiger), 54th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy, 2011 and Displaced Fractures, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich, Switzerland, 2010.