Blob (Masa amorfa)

Tony Oursler, American, born 1957

2004

installation

fiberglass sculpture, projector, DVD and DVD player

Gift of Joel and Carole Bernstein

2009.244

© Phoenix Art Museum. All rights reserved. Photo by Ken Howie.

Contemporary

No

Best known as a pioneering figure in new media, Tony Oursler’s career explores the effect of technology on humanity and culture. Oursler’s Blob is a biomorphic figure that speaks nonsensical but familiar jibberish. Based on a simplified organism of life, the blobby features of the sculpture bring to mind the viewer’s own blobby like organs, bowels and intestines, creating a connection of empathy and internal bodily kinship. The projection of a face onto an inanimate sculpture is disorienting yet oddly familiar. The movement from initial unsettlement to empathy is a performative act that leads the viewer to realize, in Oursler’s own word, “You are the blob.”