San Francisco-born, New York-based artist Tauba Auerbach has described her work as an attempt to reveal “new spectral and dimensional richness… both within and beyond the limits of perception”, an explanation that is manifest in her latest exhibition, Float, currently showing at the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York.

 

With a background in sign painting, Auerbach has garnered plenty of recognition in recent years for her interesting and often highly intricate, hand-drawn lettering, as well as a bold approach to painting that owes as much to her preoccupation with mathematical and linguistic structures and systems of logic as it does to her imaginative processes of applying paint to canvas. The resulting effect of these combined practices see Auerbach’s work break free of rigid systems and their associated conformities and into the realm of almost infinite new visual and poetic possibilities.

 

Float is Auerbach’s first one-person exhibition at Paula Cooper – a show that will include her acclaimed series of Fold paintings, first introduced by the artist in 2009. In these paintings, Auerbach twists and folds the canvas before applying the paint with an industrial sprayer, conjuring trompe l’oeil surfaces that hold traces of their former three-dimensionality. Alongside new Fold paintings, the exhibition includes a new series of Weave paintings, where, as with folding, Auerbach once again re-imagines the flat picture plane – this time using weaving techniques - as a space where topographies reside in a series of ruptures and recesses.

 

In addition to her paintings, Float also includes a number of photographic and sculptural works, the latter of which engages with derivations of tomography, (the method of producing images of the internal plane of an object), in a work entitled ‘Onyx’, revealing the inner workings of a mineral narrative. By practicing these inner-outer workings of objects, Auerbach manages to manipulate a partnership between flat surfaces and multi-dimensionality; uncovering an ambiguity that allows the two states to coexist comfortably in a gallery setting.

 

Float runs May 5 - June 9, 2012, at the Paula Cooper Gallery, 
521 W 21st Street, New York.

 

 

Image Credits:

 

TAUBA AUERBACH Bent Onyx, 2012 digital offset printing, Mohawk superfine paper, Japanese tissue, hand painted edges 17 x 6 1/2 x 6 1/2 in. (43.2 x 16.5 x 16.5 cm) (Filename: TA-1-SC)

 

TAUBA AUERBACH Double Prism II, 2012 lead crystal and urethane resin 22 1/2 x 11 5/8 x 4 1/2 in. (57.2 x 29.5 x 11.4 cm) (Filename: TA-3-SC)

 

TAUBA AUERBACH Prism Scan I, 2012 set of 13 c-prints 36 x 42 1/2 in. (91.4 x 108 cm) (Filename: TA-6-PH.1)

 

TAUBA AUERBACH Slice I, 2012 woven canvas on wooden stretcher 60 x 45 in. (152.4 x 114.3 cm) (Filename: TA-41-PTG)

 

TAUBA AUERBACH Slice II, 2012 woven canvas on wooden stretcher 60 x 45 in. (152.4 x 114.3 cm) (Filename: TA-47-PTG)

 

TAUBA AUERBACH Glass I, 2012 woven canvas on wooden stretcher 64 x 48 in. (162.6 x 121.9 cm) (Filename: TA-55-PTG)

 

TAUBA AUERBACH Untitled (Fold), 2012 acrylic paint on canvas on wooden stretcher 64 x 48 in. (162.6 x 121.9 cm) (Filename: TA-46-PTG)

 

TAUBA AUERBACH Untitled (Fold), 2012 acrylic paint on canvas on wooden stretcher 60 x 45 in. (152.4 x 114.3 cm) (Filename: TA-53-PTG)

 

TAUBA AUERBACH Untitled (Fold), 2012 acrylic paint on canvas on wooden stretcher 60 x 45 in. (152.4 x 114.3 cm) (Filename: TA-54-PTG)

Jack Smylie