Tauba Auerbach

Early life and education

Auerbach grew up in San Francisco as the daughter of theater designers and graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. in Visual Art in 2003. She apprenticed and worked as a sign painter at New Bohemia Signs in San Francisco from 2002–2005.

Work

Auerbach draws much of her inspiration from math and physics. “Engaging a variety of media, ranging from painting and photography to book design and musical performance, Auerbach explores the limits of our structures and systems of logic (linguistic, mathematical, spatial) and the points at which they break down and open up onto new visual and poetic possibilities".

Early Work

In her first solo exhibition, How To Spell The Alphabet, at New Image Art, Los Angeles, CA (2005), Auerbach showed a series of text-based drawings that explored various linguistic systems including calligraphy, Morse code, semaphore signals, the Ugaritic alphabet and Alexander Melville Bell's visible speech. During the course of her time working as a sign painter, her focus shifted from the formal to the structural aspects of language.

Recent Work

Auerbach's recent work focuses on rotational symmetry, gesture, architecture, and theories about higher-dimensional space. Auerbach's 2016 exhibition at Paula Cooper Gallery, "Projective Instrument," reflected on the work of early 20th century architect and theosophist Claude Bragdon, and featured glass sculptures, acrylic paintings, 3-D printed sculptures, and artists' books. For the season 2016/2017 in the Vienna State Opera Auerbach designed the large-scale picture "A Flexible Fabric of Inflexible Parts III" as part of the exhibition series "Safety Curtain", conceived by museum in progress.

Notable Work

Text In her first solo exhibition, Auerbach showed a series of text-based drawings that explored various linguistic systems including calligraphy, Morse code, semaphore signals, the Ugaritic alphabet and Alexander Melville Bell's visible speech.

Fold Paintings

Auerbach gained acclaim for her Fold paintings, which she first exhibited in 2009. They were included in the 2010 Whitney Biennial, and Greater New York at Moma PS1.

Weave Paintings

The all white and sometimes bi-colored stretched weavings were first exhibited in Tetrachromat, and grew more intricate and architectural in the following years. They are composed of woven canvas strips.

Grain Paintings

Auerbach's most recent works are the Grain Paintings, created using custom tools made by the artist.

Glass Sculpture

In 2015 Auerbach was a resident at Urban Glass in Brooklyn, NY. Here she learned the skills to craft the glass sculptures in the exhibition Projective Instrument.

Auerglass

The Auerglass Organ is a two-person tracker action pump organ conceived by Tauba Auerbach and Cameron Mesirow (also known as Glasser) and constructed by Parson's Pipe Organs in Canandaigua, NY. Each player has a keyboard with alternating notes of a four octave scale. The instrument cannot be played alone because each player must pump to supply wind to the other player’s notes. Auerbach and Mesirow composed and performed a piece of music on the Auerglass in 2009. The instrument is now in residence at Future-Past studio in Hudson, New York.

Exhibitions

Select Solo Exhibitions

(2005) How to Spell the Alphabet, New Image Art Gallery, Los Angeles, California

(2006) Yes and Not Yes, Deitch Projects, New York, New York

(2007) The Answer/Wasn't Here, Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco, California

(2009) Here and Now/And Nowhere, Deitch Projects, New York, New York

(2010) The W Axis, Standard (Oslo), Oslo, Norway

(2011) Tetrachromat, Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, Norway; Malmo Konsthall, Malmo, Sweden; Wiels Contemporary Art Center, Brussels, Belgium

(2013) Night (1947-2015), The Phillip Johnson Glass House, New Canaan, Connecticut

(2013) A comb, A grating, A wave, A particle, A solid, A field, A mirror, A sundial, A slice, A charge, A hole, A ghost, Standard (Oslo), Oslo, Norway

(2014) The New Ambidextrous Universe, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, England

(2015) (Two person) Reciprocal Score / Tauba Auerbach and Charlotte Posenenske, Indipendenza Roma, Rome, Italy

(2016) Projective Instrument, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, New York

(2016/2017) Safety Curtain, Vienna State Opera, an exhibition project by museum in progress, Vienna, Austria

Select Group Exhibitions

(2009) The Generational: Younger than Jesus, The New Museum, New York, New York

(2010) 2010 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York

(2010) Greater New York, MoMA PS1, Long Island City, New York

(2011) The Indiscipline of Painting: International Abstraction from the 1960s to Now, Tate St. Ives, Cornwall, United Kingdom

(2012) Lifelike, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota

(2012) Remote Control, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, England

(2012) Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language, MoMA, New York, New York

(2013) DECORUM: Carpets and tapestries by artists, Musee D'Art Moderne, Paris, France

(2015) TeleGenic - Art and Television, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bonn, Germany

(2015) Condensed Matter Community, Synchrotron Radiation Center: Home of Aladdin, Stoughton, Wisconsin

(2016) Typeface to Interface: Graphic Design from the Collection, SFMoMA, San Francisco, California

Diagonal Press

In 2013 Auerbach founded Diagonal Press, under which she publishes books, type specimens, manipulatives and other items. All publications are open edition; nothing is signed or numbered.

Artists' Books: Editions

Monographs

Art market

Auerbach is represented by Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, NY, and Standard (Oslo), in Oslo, Norway. In 2014, a 2011 trompe l’oeil canvas by Auerbach reached $1.8 million at Phillips auction in New York, surpassing the high estimate of $1.2 million. Later that year, Auerbach's Untitled (Fold) (2010) sold for $2.85 million.