Tauba Auerbach — S v Z

Tauba Auerbach’s interdisciplinary work asks us to consider the ways that structure, pattern, and gesture function at intricate and vast scales. Often testing the boundaries of rational systems such as language, logic, geometry, and physics, Auerbach (b. 1981, San Francisco) is driven by a curiosity about where these established principles break down or become subjective. Undermining what the artist calls the “habituated gaze,” the work contends with questions of what and how we perceive, exploring the existence of multidimensional space and the resonant capacity of certain shapes and forms.

Auerbach studies these ideas by manipulating them in drawings, sculptures, and paintings, employing them in custom-built production tools, and incorporating them into objects that can be lived with or worn. A continual student of new and traditional craft technologies, including weaving, marbling, glass working, and 3-D printing, the artist has a longstanding relationship with hand-lettering and calligraphy.

Building a web of connections across time and media, this exhibition—Auerbach’s first museum survey—brings together seventeen years of the New York-based artist’s artworks as well as designed and found objects, prototypes, reference materials, and open-edition publications produced and distributed by their imprint Diagonal Press. The title S v Z further embodies the close yet indeterminate relationship between form and meaning that surfaces throughout the artist’s practice.