Artist Oscar Tuazon reflects on the role of his project the "Los Angeles Water School [LAWS]," a multi unit structure engaging with the Los Angeles River. For several years LAWS provided a platform for bringing people together around the question of water through exhibitions and panel discussions commencing with a community organized exhibition called Language and a roundtable engaging Tongva histories of the river and indigenous thinking around water. The structure moves to various sites to engage with questions of water in diverse contexts including East Lansing, Michigan and Spring Valley, Nevada thereby creating a dispersed map of how clean water moves across vast distances and connects us. Tuazon reflects on how an artwork can intervene at critical moments in an infrastructural conversation and then disappear again.

Engaging different methods of construction, Oscar Tuazon frequently uses wood, concrete, glass, steel, and piping as materials to create his structures and installations. His works have roots in minimalism, conceptualism, and architecture, and have a direct relationship with both the site in which they are presented, as well as with their viewer, often through physical engagement.

Oscar Tuazon (b. 1975, Seattle) lives and works in Los Angeles. The artist is currently the subject of solo shows at Bellevue Arts Museum, Oscar Tuazon: Collaborator and at the Aspen Art Museum, Oscar Tuazon: Fire Worship. Other recent solo shows include Oscar Tuazon: Water School at MSU Broad Museum earlier this year; a large-scale installation Une colonne d’eau in the Place Vendôme, Paris in 2017, Oscar Tuazon: Hammer Projects, at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles in 2016 and Studio, at Le Consortium, Dijon, France in 2015.

Crew Credits -

Production:
Creator and Executive Producer - Hernan Diaz Alonso
Producers - Marcelyn Gow/Reza Monahan
Director - Reza Monahan
Director of Photography - Sean Morris
B Camera - Robert Moreno
C Camera - Solomon Turner/Walker Sayen
Lighting - Jinn Jeong
Sound Engineer - Chris Trueman

Post-Production:
Story Producer - Marcelyn Gow
Editors - Sean Morris/Reza Monahan

Soundtrack by Sara Johanne and Jason Breeden

Additional Images Provided By:
© Oscar Tuazon; Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York, Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris, and Eva Presenhuber, Zürich, New York

1)
Oscar Tuazon
Construction Views of "Los Angeles Water School (LAWS)"
2018
Photos by Jeremy Jansen
Series of Images

2)
Oscar Tuazon
"Zome Alloy"
Installation Views June 2016 © Art Basel
Series of Images

3)
Oscar Tuazon
"Water School"
Installation Views at The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University
2019
Photos by Eat Pomegranate Photography
Series of Images

4)
Oscar Tuazon
"Une Colonne d’Eau"
Installation at Place Vendome, Paris
October 16 – November 9, 2017
Photos by Marc Domage and Pieranna Scagliotti
Series of Images

5)
Oscar Tuazon
"Water Map (Goshute Aquifer, Spring Valley, NV)"
2018
India Ink, watercolor, marker on paper
24 x 36 inches
(61 x 91.4 cm)

Photo by Farzad Owrang

6)
Oscar Tuazon
"Water Map (Bahsawa bee, Spring Valley, NV)"
2018
India Ink, water color, marker on paper
Triptych
Each sheet: 24 x 36 inches(61 x 91.4 cm)

Photo by Farzad Owrang

7)
Oscar Tuazon
"Mind Pipeline"
2016
Aluminum
Dimensions Variable
Installation Views "Hammer Projects: Oscar Tuazon" at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
February 6 – May 22, 2016
Photo by Brian Forrest

8)
Oscar Tuazon
"Live Steam Shift Whistle"
2014
Cast iron, steel, water, fire, steam
187 ¾ x 35 7/8 x 35 7/8 inches
(477 x 91 x 91 cm)

Photo by Oscar Tuazon

9)
Oscar Tuazon
"Beyond the realm of speech"
Steel, acryl glass, luminescent tube, blinds, drywall installation, wood
2013
78 ¾ x 120 1/8 x 65 inches
(200 x 305 x 165 cm)

Photograph by Stefan Altenburger, Zurich

Special thanks to Caroline Burghardt and Jeremy Jansen

©2019 SCI-Arc Channel