Oliver Tanner

“An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.” Jean Cocteau

The dual implications of minimalism as an ideology has played a pivotal role in dispensing the requirement of resolution within Tanner’s practice. The effacement of the non-essential within minimalism also posits a diametric entropy as permission of chaos and embodiment of the universal ensues. This perceptual and linguistic dilemma constitutes the crucial predilection of Tanner’s current work. A basic illusionist trick makes for the conception of an impossible object but is fabricated in such a way that it remains saliently discernible and renounces the suspicion of a colluding spectacle. This perceptible inclination is a pertinent feature for the revealing role of linguistic faculties within the work and for its pairing with the sculptural product.

Tanner’s work exists in a void of pragmatic incompetence between the meticulous premonitory thought processes and the onslaught of subsequent intuitive chaos. Beckett and his refusal to shape the chaos of existence has provoked a questioning of the way in which we speak about art with regards to its difficult mutation to the current era of ‘relational aesthetics’. The work negotiates a perspective of form follows chaos, chaos being the predecessor of fiction, fiction being a partial basis of Tanner’s practice.