Beschreibung:

6 Tauba Auerbach Untitled (Fold) 2011 acrylic on canvas 60 x 45 in. (152.4 x 114.3 cm.) Signed and dated "Tauba Auerbach 2011" along the overlap.
Provenance Paula Cooper Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner, 2011 Literature E. Dauplay, E. Abbott Abott, I. Calvino, Tauba Auerbach Folds, Berlin/Bergen: Sternberg Press/Bergen Kunsthall, 2011, p. 86 (illustrated) Catalogue Essay “The entire point of making art, to me, is newness and to expand your mind, even in some tiny way.” TAUBA AUERBACH 2009 Transcending a “…liminal state between two or three dimensions,” Tauba Auerbach’s impressive Fold paintings embody a masterful synthesis of painterly industrial technique and careful consideration of the mathematical and physical principles governing nature. (L. Yablonsky, “Women’s Work,” T Magazine, 22 February 2010) Concerned with the representational connotations of her practice – both calculated and spontaneous – Auerbach’s work explores the visual paradox emerging from the tension between concealed regularity and apparent disorder, illuminating the innumerable patterns produced in spontaneity. Part trompe l’oeil, part geometry, and part classical realism, Tauba Auerbach’s incomparable Folds simultaneously confound and entice, challenging yet embracing the gestural and formulaic methodologies of her artistic predecessors, epitomizing contemporary realism. Trained as a sign maker and calligrapher, Auerbach first mastered the formal and conceptual elements of style during her apprenticeship at a sign shop in San Francisco. Intertwining design and her personal inclination towards mathematical patterns, Auerbach established a visually dynamic vocabulary that initiated and continues to inform her artistic practice. Auerbach’s interest in typography and the logic and reason found in regular and irregular patterns inspires her to reinterpret the mathematical formulas that serve as the foundation for her ostensibly abstract work. Employing grid-like patterns and alphabetical typography in mathematical yet symbolic and aesthetic form, Auerbach’s earliest canvases and works on paper, such as those exhibited in her first solo exhibition, Yes and Not Yes in 2006, appropriate everyday imagery in compelling and optically intriguing compositions. Writing of the artist’s exploration of these recurring geometric themes, Brian Sholis notes, “Auerbach quickly discovered patterns: coronas of bright light; concentrations of shadow; striations of color...” (“Random Rules,” Chaos: Tauba Auerbach exhibition catalogue, Deitch Projects, New York, September 3-October 17, 2009, p. 58) Extending these numerical and geometric motifs into abstraction, Auerbach’s foray into the photographic medium and eventual rejection of such obvious symbology is evident in the development of her ambiguous yet succinct abstract Folds. As a precursor to the Fold paintings, the apparent random disorder evident in Auerbach’s Static pictures suggests the artist’s evolving concern with the visual experience and the act of seeing. She explains, “That particular tension is a common thread throughout…the idea of merging two things... states of being, order and randomness, randomness and chaos, two-dimensionality and three-dimensionality.” (Tauba Auerbach in S. Pulimood, “Filling in the Dots,” Art in America, October 14, 2009) Auerbach’s tenacious attention to the underlying processes that inform the viewer’s visual experience almost deceive the eye; her Static photographs belie a random philosophy not unlike her abstract Folds. The repetitive grids, dots and lines of differing lengths and widths converse with Auerbach’s crumpled and crushed canvases to produce a visual illusion that both confirms and denies the possibility of true abstraction. Revealing the challenge she faces in transforming this theory into practice, Auerbach notes “…every time I try to do something perfect and ordered I always make a mistake, and that breaks the rigidity of the order, and [I] think that’s the best part. All these experiments [force] me [to] reevaluate what is ‘perfect’ and I think that’s a good thing, and that is wha