Tony Oursler - "Vampiric Battle"

TONY OURSLER
Vampiric Battle, 2009 (LIKENESS Exhibition -- Through March 21, 2010)
video, steel, digital prints, foam board

In Vampiric Battle, we find strange creatures reminiscent of a science fiction film or surrealist dream sequence. Oursler addresses the issue of facial alteration and reveals his attentiveness about how we now live in a world where the idea of lookism is one of the most pervasive but denied of prejudices. Increasingly women are trying to mimic the beauty of the adolescent and in doing so join the universal obsession with clear skin and the various ruses to mimic it. Cosmetics, expensive creams, Botox and ever more facial plastic surgery, is all about the illusion of youth and fertility and the innate desire to attract a mate. Such desires for eternal youth evoke the legend of vampires and the portrait of Dorian Gray and the extreme methods pursued. Therefore, looking at the effects that cosmetics and plastic surgery have had on our society are worth looking at to show how appearance obsessed a society has become and how we as humans have evolved to cover up our problems with ourselves rather than embracing them. (Text taken from curator Elaine A. King's gallery guide.)

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