Renowned American multimedia and video artist Tony Oursler exhibits a series of glass works, previously never shown before, at Galerie Forsblom in Stockholm. In the exhibition b0t / flOw - ch@rt, robotic glass sculptures with artificial intelligence, miniature flat screens, exposed computer circuitry and a variety of materials figuratively arranged, are shown next to two dimensional screens based on flow charts. The chimerical bots relate to Oursler's ongoing interest in human interaction with technology and questions the intelligence of the AI-systems.
This exhibition depicts an inevitable world in which self-help, new age and motivational programs are fused or transferred to AI systems, forming a low-fi singularity, with unforeseen humorous and disturbing results. These self-illuminating forms relate as much to the history of robotics as they do to camouflaged cellphone towers, video games and scarecrows. They play with the notion of how artificial intelligence may help us achieve our goals or not. They also question how these intelligences may choose to form physical identity through vestigial artifacts of humanity.
The freestanding bots are juxtaposed with wall mounted flow charts, which combine digitally moving images, painting, and sound. These works are based on schematics depicting motivational and inspirational systems, cognitive behavioral therapy, programing, networking to form a nexus of human desire, folly, and machine logic. Artificial intelligence, or A.I., brings to light many questions regarding our coevolution with such systems. Most notably, will our creations replace us and become our final undoing? Or will we enter a utopian world of limitless knowledge and achievements? It is the artist’s perspective that in between these two questions, A.I has begun to enter our world in many fascinating and banal ways which are open to speculation.
Tony Oursler, born 1957, lives and works in New York, USA and received his BFA at the California Institute for the Arts, USA in 1979. Oursler has exhibited at numerous renowned galleries and museums around the world. He recently exhibited in a large in a retrospective exhibition including new works at Magasin III Museum & Foundation for Contemporary Art in Stockholm, Sweden. During 2017 he exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York and at the Redling Fine Art, Los Angeles, USA. Ousler’s work is represented in collections at the Museum of Modern Art and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, USA; the National Museum of Osaka, Japan; Tate Gallery, London, UK as well as the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France, among others. Galerie Forsblom has represented Tony Oursler since 2007.β