Always rooted in the medium of film, Tony Oursler conjures sculptural and immersive experiences using technologies that hark back to magic lanterns, Victorian light shows, camera obscura and auratic parlor tricks. Yet his work also looks forward to the fully networked, digitally assisted future of image and identity production. As a pioneer of video art in early 1980s New York, Oursler specialized in hallucinogenic dramaturgy and radical formal experimentation, employing animation, montage and live action: “My early idea of what could be art for my generation was an exploded TV.” From performative and low-fi beginnings, Oursler has developed an ever-evolving multimedia and audio-visual practice utilizing projections, video screens, sculptures and optical devices; which might take form as figurative puppets, ethereal talking automatons, or immersive, cacophonous environments. His enduring fascination for the conjunctions between the diametrically opposed worlds of science and spiritualism has allowed him to explore all kinds of occult and mystical phenomena. Tony Oursler (b. 1957, New York) completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the California Institute for the Arts, Valencia, California in 1979. Lives in New York.