Artist: Tauba Auerbach
Exhibition title: Panthalassa
Venue: STANDARD (OSLO), Oslo, Norway
Date: October 16 – November 21, 2020
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and STANDARD (OSLO)
This show presents a series of painted world maps that keep oceans intact, center the Southern Hemisphere and cut along natural rather than arbitrary boundaries.
The paintings are accompanied by a group of highly processed infrared photos depicting currents of hot and cold water moving against each other.
For the last several years the artist has been painting in a mediated way — spraying, weaving or creating custom mechanical tools that remove or deposit paint. This time the tool is a piece of software, written for Auerbach by programmer Jason Davies. The tool allows the artist to make original projections, double worlds, and unusual rotations of the earth within its familiar frames.
Using these raw materials, Auerbach reconstructed a pair of innovative maps, originally hand-drawn by geophysicist, oceanographer and toy collector Athelstan Spilhaus between the 1940’s and 1980’s. These irregular-looking worlds are neighbored by two original maps that build on his techniques, in which Auerbach uses stereographic projection to frame all the world’s oceans inside the shoreline of a single continent. North America and Europe are stretched around the peripheries.
As a counterpoint to these zoomed-out views of the earth in its entirety, there are two zoomed-in, focused looks at relevant sites, tunneling back in time — the gallery in Oslo and Tauba’s studio in New York. A living, as-complete-as-possible timeline of the studio will be mounted in New York, as will a comprehensive set of maps for the gallery’s location in Oslo.
The show is a study of place, point of view, and a feld where geometry and politics intersect.
A set of affordable printed maps, published by Diagonal Press will be for sale at the gallery and online, and, along with a portion earnings from the show, will contribute to Critical Resistance, Wilikia Project and Indigenous Environmental Network.
Tauba Auerbach, Panthalassa, 2020, exhibition view, STANDARD (OSLO)
Tauba Auerbach, Panthalassa, 2020, exhibition view, STANDARD (OSLO)
Tauba Auerbach, Panthalassa, 2020, exhibition view, STANDARD (OSLO)
Tauba Auerbach, Panthalassa, 2020, exhibition view, STANDARD (OSLO)
Tauba Auerbach, Panthalassa, 2020, exhibition view, STANDARD (OSLO)
Tauba Auerbach, Stereographic (Eurasia surrounds), 2020, Acrylic on canvas, metal grommets, metal nails and elastic cord, 159.76 x 213.1 cm / 63 x 84 in
Tauba Auerbach, Stereographic (North America surrounds), 2020, Acrylic on canvas, metal grommets, metal nails and elastic cord, 159.76 x 213.1 cm / 63 x 84 in
Tauba Auerbach, Spilhaus III, 2020, Acrylic on canvas, metal grommets, metal nails and elastic cord, 159.76 x 213.1 cm / 63 x 84 in
Tauba Auerbach, Spilhaus XIX, 2020, Acrylic on canvas, metal grommets, metal nails and elastic cord, 159.76 x 213.1 cm / 63 x 84 in
Tauba Auerbach, Heat Current III, 2020, C-print on archival grade paper, face-mounted on TruLife Acrylic with aluminum back, 64.77 x 91.44 cm / 25 1/2 x 36 in
Tauba Auerbach, Heat Current IV, 2020, C-print on archival grade paper, face-mounted on TruLife Acrylic with aluminum back, 64.77 x 91.44 cm / 25 1/2 x 36 in
Tauba Auerbach, Heat Current V, 2020, C-print on archival grade paper, face-mounted on TruLife Acrylic with aluminum back, 64.77 x 91.44 cm / 25 1/2 x 36 in
Tauba Auerbach, Heat Current VI, 2020, C-print on archival grade paper, face-mounted on TruLife Acrylic with aluminum back, 64.77 x 91.44 cm / 25 1/2 x 36 in