Tauba Auerbach

Tauba Auerbach’s fascination with the origins of language, its break-downs and slippages especially, has led her to an artistic study of language qua gestalt. How does verbal language relate to the symbols used in written language, and do these symbols reveal anything about the structure of the human brain? How arbitrary are the marks, both analog and digital, used to express language, and where do they begin to muck it all up?

Her answer, of course, is that they are largely arbitrary, but rich with abstract beauty and conceptual depth. In razor-sharp painted execution—which reveals Auerbach’s training as a professional sign painter—her works on panel and paper are a refreshing update to the abstract conceptual tradition, and just as intellectually rigorous.

Auerbach recently designed a full-colour book of her newest body of work entitled How to Spell the Alphabet. Her work has been previously seen in New York in the Dreamland Artists Club project in Coney Island. Auerbach graduated from Stanford University where she studied with Margaret Kilgallen. She lives and works in San Francisco.