Joel Tauber

Born:
1972
Residence:
Winston Salem, North Carolina, USA
Nationality:
American
Trust:
APT Los Angeles
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PRESS & PUBLICATIONS

  • Frieze New York 2017, which is scheduled to begin on May 5 and run through May 7, 2017 will have a special program within the Main section called “Focus.”

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  • Compoli Presti gallery in Paris is hosting a group exhibition titled “Plages”, which brings together the works of 12 artists.

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  • Palais de Tokyo will host a group show featuring artists Paul Barateiro, Richard Brautigan, Isabelle Cornaro, Marjorie Keller, Lee Kit, Marie Lund, Michael E. Smith and Mika Tajima from February 3 to May 8, 2017.

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  • One of the most interesting characteristics of the contemporary art scene is its capacity to bring together people with completely different backgrounds and personal stories. I was introduced to Joel Tauber and his practice at a gallery opening on a sunny afternoon last year in Los Angeles. Within a few seconds of talking, we discovered our mutual admiration for Bas Jan Ader, a Dutch artist who made his career in California in the 1960s and 1970s. Joel told me about his work Searching for the Impossible: The Flying Project (2001–3), which was inspired by Ader’s infamous “falling” pieces; and I told him about my current research project on Ader for an upcoming book.

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  • If Mars still had oceans and active volcanism it might have resembled Lanzarote.

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  • After Dark” is the response by Frac Île-de-France (the Île-de-France Regional Contemporary Art Fund) to an invitation to display its collection here at Mamco.

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  • 10 Opening Exhibitions to Watch

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  • As we mark the start of the 2015 season, we’ve collected some of the most outstanding group exhibitions currently on view around the world, from Beirut to Beijing. The curatorial forces behind these exhibitions move from meditations on particular mediums, such as painting or photography, to works by artists united by geography or movement, to collections of works that correspond to specific films, working methods, or even notions of time and space.

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  • “Archeo” is this season’s exhibition of artworks presented on the High Line, the elevated railway turned greenway on

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  • Curator Cecilia Alemani has recently been watching hi-tech gadgets, hipster snacks and bits of clothing get reduced to liquid in a blender.

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  • The Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States in collaboration with the Institut Francais, with the support of the Alliance Française of Los Angeles and the French Ministry of Culture and Communication, are pleased to announce Ceci n’est pas…Art Between France and Los Angeles.

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  • Pumping water, pumping oil and pumping a railroad hand car -- those are the central images in each frame of a film triptych in a layered and marvelous

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  • Gary Carrion-Murayari: I’ve chosen to speak to you both because of the complex, evocative, or even disconcerting approach that you bring to familiar,

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BIOGRAPHY

Joel Tauber was born in Boston in 1972. He studied at Yale University (BA in art history and sculpture, 1995), Lesley University (MA in education, 1997), and Art Center College of Design (MFA, 2002). Tauber teaches experimental film and orchestrates the video art program at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Joel Tauber’s practice has led him through a series of rigorous personal investigations about mysticism, ethics, and the environment - that are poetic and often quixotic. These research projects are presented as installations and films that are structured in ways that raise questions and offer cultural critiques in non-didactic ways. Tauber spent two years trying to achieve enlightenment outside the confines of organized religion by inserting himself into holes in the ground. He spent another two years researching flight as a metaphysical tool and applying that research to his own pursuit of flight. After unsuccessfully jumping off rocks while trying different mental and flapping strategies, Tauber managed to achieve his dream, flying 150 feet into the air for an hour and a half in a bagpipe-and-balloon-powered flying machine that he had constructed. Excited by the idea that music had helped him fly, Tauber spent the next couple of years exploring the ocean while scuba diving and translating his movements into music; this project culminated in a 3-channel video installation-cum-disco. The following five years were devoted to protecting and celebrating a forlorn and lonely sycamore tree that was stuck in a giant parking lot. Tauber installed (guerrilla style with a jackhammer) a metal fence around the tree; built giant earrings for the tree to celebrate its beauty; convinced the City to remove 400 square feet of asphalt around the tree and to protect it permanently with a ring of boulders; and planted 200 “tree baby” offspring throughout Southern California. “Sick-Amour” was presented as a 12-channel video tree sculpture as well as a documentary film / love story. “Pumping” - is a meditation on the birth of Los Angeles and how the Southern Pacific Railroad commandeered the City and exploited the oil and water resources in the region. “Pumping” is both a short experimental film and an installation comprised of 3 video projections, 80 feet of train tracks, a giant metal “filmstrip”, 11 photographs, and a handcar sculpture. “The Sharing Project” is a 15 -channel video installation and a feature film that poses questions about whether we share enough in our Capitalist world. It focuses on the seemingly simple task of Tauber teaching his young son Zeke to share. As Zeke and Joel struggle to understand what sharing means and how much they should share, experts in different fields offer their thoughts, creating more complexity and questions. In pursuit of answers, Zeke and Joel turn to the forgotten Socialist Jewish commune of Happyville (1905-1908) in South Carolina, hoping that some of the mysteries of sharing are buried in the traces of the utopian community.

Tauber's work has been shown in solo exhibitions at a number of locations, including Galerie Adamski in Berlin as well as Aachen, Germany; the Helen Lindhurst Fine Arts Gallery at the University of Southern California; the Rocky Mountain School of Photography; and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. Tauber’s installation, “The Sharing Project”, will be presented as a solo art exhibition at the University Art Museum at Cal State Long Beach from June 13 – July 19, 2015. He has been included in numerous group art exhibitions including "My LA" at the Haubrok Foundation in Berlin; the 2004 and 2008 California Biennials at the Orange County Museum of Art; "The Gravity in Art" at the De Appel Centre For Contemporary Art in Amsterdam; and "Still Things Fall From the Sky" at the California Museum of Photography. Film Festivals include the Sedona International Film Festival, San Francisco Documentary Festival, and the Downtown Film Festival - Los Angeles, where his movie, “Sick-Amour”, was awarded “Best Green Film.” Tauber won the 2007 Contemporary Collectors of Orange County Fellowship, the 2007-2008 CalArts / Alpert Ucross Residency Prize for Visual Arts, and a 2015 grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation For The Visual Arts in conjunction with a residency from The Grand Central Art Center. His project “Sick-Amour” was shortlisted for a 2011 International Green Award. Tauber’s work has been featured in numerous media outlets, including National Public Radio, Deutsche Welle / Deutschlandfunk radio, WFDD radio, NBC local news, the Ovation Network, Swedish Television, ArtReview Magazine, The Design Magazine, ArtWeek, artUS Magazine, The Pasadena Star News, and The Los Angeles Times.


For additional information about this artist, visit Mutual Art