Tauba Auerbach in “Bodies of Knowledge”

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In their Brooklyn studio, artist Tauba Auerbach uses craft traditions as research methods to deepen their understanding of mathematical and scientific theories. “It seems appropriate to me to work in a lot of different materials, media, and processes, because I’m focusing on connectivity and the relationship between lots of different things,” says Auerbach. As an apprentice at New Bohemia Signs in San Francisco, Auerbach learned to approach painting as a technology, requiring precision and balance to achieve what they call a “sweet spot.” Auerbach frequently merges painting with other techniques to create eye-catching murals and designs, using the floating dyes from a paper marbling tray as the source for their 2019 mural 2020 on the Mosser Towers; their “dazzle pattern” in Flow Separation (2018), painted on New York’s John J. Harvey Fireboat; and their handpainted mural inside the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), as part of their 2022 survey exhibition S v Z. 

One of the works in S v Z is Auerglass (2009), which draws inspiration from Wave Organ, another piece that sits just north of SFMOMA. Wave Organ is a 1986 work by Peter Richards and George Gonzales that activates the unstable relationship between land and sea using a series of pipes that descend from a jetty into the ocean at varying heights, producing sound as the tides change. Interdependence and instability are also characteristics of Auerglass Organ, the two-person, interdependent pump organ the artist designed with musician Cameron Mesirow, who performs as Glasser. The instrument requires cooperation to work, with a four-octave keyboard divided between either side of the organ in alternating notes, and pedals beneath each player’s feet that pump air to give voice to the other player’s notes. With Mesirow seated opposite the artist, the pair practice and perform what Auerbach calls a nearly impossible task, two performers playing as one.

Back in their studio, Auerbach drags a chisel tip marker across gridded paper to make their Ligature Drawings. The ligature drawings use a “knit structure,” sequences of a single gesture woven together on the page, wherein the artist challenges themselves, modifying the rules of a sequence without lifting the marker, or attempting to draw from a specific part of the body like the wrist or the elbow. The trance-like state achieved in these intuitive and spontaneous drawings is the ideal space for the artist to think, and thus constitutes a kind of research technology in itself. “There is so much wisdom embedded in techniques and procedures for crafts passed from person to person,” says Auerbach, whose practice continues to evolve using the body as a tool for thought.