Tony Oursler graduated from the California Institute for the Arts (BFA) in 1979, after studying art at the Rockland Community College in New York State. In 1976, he made his first video tape, Joe, Joe's Woman and Joe's Transsexual Brother, which used toys (Barbie and GI Joe) to act out a story which played ironically with the definition of the television show according to Oursler: sex and violence. He has said that all the basic elements on which he continues to work were already present in this video. Before finishing his studies, he made four other video tapes: Diamond (Head), Life, Good Things and Bad Things
and Rosey Finger of Dawn. His first public showing was in a collective exhibition in 1978 at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. The following year, again in a collective show, he presented his works in New York and at the 11th Paris Biennale. His first personal show, entitled One Choice, took place at the University of California in Berkeley. The same year, he had shows in New York and Chicago (Video Viewpoints). In 1982, he showed all his video tapes at the Kitchen [The Kitchen Center for Music, Video and Dance] in New York. The tapes from the 1980s used characters (plasticine or cardboard models, actors in costume, etc.) who all had one thing in common: deviant social and sexual behaviour. These "puppets" move around inside expressionist decors that use stage tricks reminiscent of Méliès to ironize about the myths and conventions of television culture. the artist's films from this period include The Loner (1980), the story of a paranoiac wandering in a universe of macabre obsession and sexual alienation, and Grand Mal (1981), an extravagant tale about the post-modern cultural malaise. In 1983 in Los Angeles, Tony Oursler staged a performance with Mike Kelley (X Catholic). In 1984, he took part in The Luminous Image at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Until 1985, he mainly exhibited in the United States. In 1986, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris allowed him to produce an important installation, Sphères d' influence, designed as a journey in which the city of Paris served as the backdrop for a trip through the psychological world and the madness of day-to-day-life resulting from technoculture. In 1987, he took part in the exhibition L'Epoque, la mode, la morale, la passion (The Age, fashion, morality, passion) in Paris (Centre Georges Pompidou) and in documenta 8 in Cassel. In 1988, the "Lieu", a Contemporary Art Centre in Quebec, organized the exhibition Tony Oursler's Works. Again in 1988, Tony Oursler exhibited at the Los Angeles Center for Photographic Studies with Constance Dejong, with whom - as in 1996 and 1997 - he staged a performance (Relatives) the following year at the Kitchen. Constance Dejong is an author whose performances can be considered a natural extension of her work on writing. She also collaborated with Tony Oursler to make Joy Ride™. Meanwhile, Oursler made Constellation : Intermission New York. In 1989, in Dusseldorf, the exhibition Drawings, Objects, Videotapes showed various aspects of his creative work. At the Segue Gallery in New York, he produced On Our Own. The following year, he created Dummies, Hex signs, Watercolors in San Francisco. In the 1990s, Tony Oursler continued and developed his work on tape and installations. The puppets left the monitor to invade the spectator's space. He made his famous "dolls", rag figures resembling humans animated by video projection. Ever since his early work, Tony Oursler has distinguished himself by his representations of an aggressive body in which the privileged moments are the cry, lamentation, convulsion, repetition and hysteria. The sound and text are vital elements in his work in terms of the impact they have on the spectator. The aggressiveness manifestn his work was accentuated with the animated puppets. Tony Oursler has shaken video out of its hypnotic trance by removing it from the flat space and re-installing it in the world. He has declared: "The dolls are a solution to ensure that transition towards this world. [...], they take the monitor's place and displace it [...]. Video no longer acts as a window through which we watch, it has become something physical." [1] We hear these anthropomorphic incarnations shout (Weeping Woman, 1993) or soliloquize (Phobic and White Trash, 1993), and even speak to one another (Anne and Daisy, 1995). In the Hague in 1992, he presented a work entitled F/X Plotter, 2 Way Hex at the Kijkhuis, and then staged a performance with James Casabere, Station Project, at the Kortrijk Railway Station. In 1993, White Trash / Phobic travelled from Geneva to Berlin via New York. He then exhibited Dummies, Dolls, and Poison Candy at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham. He continued the series at the Metro Pictures Gallery in New York with Dummies, Flowers, Alters, Clouds, and Organs. In 1995, in collaboration with Constance Dejong and the musician Stephen Vitiello, Tony Oursler produced Fantastic Prayers, a CD ROM for the Dia Center for the Arts in New York. The same year, there was a large travelling exhibition devoted to him: Tony Oursler, Dummies, Clouds, Organs, Flowers, Watercolors, Videotapes, Alters, Performances and Dolls, which went to Frankfurt, Strasbourg, Geneva and Eindhoven. In Oslo, he staged Hysterical. The Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven also devoted a show to his work in 1996. At the same time, with Mike Kelley, he brought his audio works together in a 3-CD boxed set entitled The Poetics : Remixes of Recordings from 1977 to 1983, pieces resulting from collaboration with the group "The Poetics" in the 1970sduring their studies at Cal Arts. This group studied performance through dance shows, comedies and work involving sound and music. Still in 1996, Tony Oursler designed Switch for the collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou, an installation set up to match the site which exploited various conversational registers, ranging from the philosophy lecture to pop culture and from a speech about personal development to discussions concerning truth. In 1997, at documenta 10 in Cassel, he presented with Mike Kelley the installation The Poetics Projects, 1977-1997. During the same year, in Philadelphia, he exhibited Judy, an installation based on personality disorders and his relationship with the media, followed by Tony Oursler: Colours, Heads and Organs in Los Angeles and Tony Oursler, Guilty in Chicago. 1997 ended with the exhibition Tony Oursler at the capc in Bordeaux.

Dominique Garrigues

[1] Elisabeth Janus, "Entretien avec Tony Oursler", Oursler / Kessler, Salzbourg, Salzburger Kunstverein, 1994 (quoted by Paul Ardenne in Art Press, Paris, number 229, p. 23).