Tauba Auerbach
THE ANSWER/WASN'T HERE
May 4 – 26, 2007
Opening reception: Friday, May 4th, 6-9pm
The Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco, is pleased to present a solo exhibition of the work of San Francisco-based artist Tauba Auerbach, titled THE ANSWER/WASN'T HERE. The title of the exhibition, an anagram itself, alludes to the conceptual framework of Auerbach’s practice, which examines the slippage between language and meaning. The show will consist of drawings, paintings, a video installation and a bartering project – all exploring this central idea from different vantage points.
Auerbach’s large-scale “50/50” drawings consist of varied black and white patterns that create the same grey effect thus expressing the notion that the same idea can be presented in an infinite number of ways. Other drawings and paintings playfully engage the use of anagrams and alphabet composites to investigate the plasticity and subjectivity of meaning. Two large pieces compare the U.S. Military NATO phonetic alphabet - where a word is assigned to each letter (i.e. Alpha, Bravo, Charlie,etc.) - to the “Supreme Alphabet” of the Five Percenters - a faction of the Nation of Islam that also assigned a word to each letter to interpret their texts (i.e. Allah, Born, Cee, Devine).
A video installation depicts a large game of “telephone”, subtitled so the viewer can see how the message mutates as it is passed from one player to the next. Auerbach also offers up a bartering project where 100 books of varied black and white patterns can be traded for anything the gallery visitor views as equal in value.
Tauba Auerbach was born in 1981 in San Francisco and continues to live and work there.
Her work has been shown in museums and galleries throughout the U.S. and Europe.
Auerbach’s work was most recently presented in a solo exhibition at Deitch Projects in
New York and in a group show at Pierogi, Leipzig. She will also be featured in upcoming
group shows at Gagosian Gallery and John Connelly Presents in New York.