It feels like for artists of a certain age who grew up in the Bay Area, as I did, we lived during the last great San Francisco art movement, the Mission School. That legacy seems to permeate so much of what art means here, even today. Tauba Auerbach was always different, a Stanford grad and probably more in line with the concepts of where the Bay was headed than where it had been. To call her one of my absolute favorite artists is an understatement: she almost literally pulled me into a love of abstraction and the possibilities of how science and graphic design can play a role in creative art.
Her newest book, S v Z, captures the breadth and essence of Tauba's work, displaying her talent for coalescing a myriad of ostensibly disparate genres: science and typography, graphic design and conceptual art. The book covers hundreds of works from 2004 to 2020, as well as personally referenced images and research alongside her final outputs. Throughout the 250 plus pages, her work creates a hypnotic rhythm that could be classified Op Art but exudes originality and freshness. As someone, personally, who found math and physics to be too abstract (and oddly literal), I’m awed that Tauba found inspiration in these fields and turned them into a robust art practice. She can paint depth into the flattest of surfaces, textures that apparently look digital but are hand-created. Years from now, she will be included in retrospectives around the world, one of the most important artists of an era, who brought a philosophical and original voice to how science, technology and the arts can mesh, and how the unseen networks around us can be visualized. If you haven't indulged in her works before, S v Z is a great start. —Evan Pricco
Available now at ArtBook.com.
