Tauba Auerbach. “Flow Separation” (2018). Public Art Fund/John J. Harvey. © Tauba Auerbach. Photo: Nicholas Knight.

We’ve explored the gifts of love, life, or a warm soup on a cold day. However, one gift we humans possess is one we have yet to see matched—that of intellect. We’ve searched the stars for others with our gift, but still, to no avail—or so we think. We’ve searched so far with our intellect, so far beyond our primate relatives that it’s taken us to the moon and beyond. Our intellect has established languages and has consistently attempted to rationalize why our world is the way it is. Artist Tauba Auerbach, imploring their Stanford University-educated and New York City-dwelling intellect, challenges that which sets us apart from other living things in the biosphere.

Joseph Becker (co-curator of new exhibition of Auerbach’s work, S v Z, at SFMOMA, and the museum’s associate curator of architecture and design) states on the show’s complex themes, “There is an immense incalculability and a limit to our knowledge of these structures, and the ways we make sense of them, from theories in physics to mathematical and platonic concepts.” Becker continues on Auerbach’s practice, “Tauba is driven to explore the edges of these far-reaching—even existential—ideas and how the rules that we generally accept might be unraveled or challenged.”

Tauba Auerbach. “Shadow Weave – Metamaterial/Slice Ray” (2013). Private collection. © Tauba Auerbach. Photo: Steven Probert, courtesy the artist and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.

Auerbach’s first museum survey brings together seventeen years of work, in addition to designed and found objects, prototypes, reference materials, and a publication from their own Diagonal Press. “We set out first to present the entirety of their practice,” says Becker on the curatorial undertaking. “Included is a multitude of works, from the artist’s early gouache and ink drawings that deal with language and letterforms, to trompe l’oeil paintings that explore a push and pull between two and three dimensions, photographs that capture electromagnetic noise from the Big Bang, weavings in canvas and glass that create complex, interlocking structures, and video that interprets unresolved theories in physics.” Indeed, a challenging of rationality is central to Auerbach’s work as the artist draws lines between point A and point Z—an exploration of disparate points.

The title of the show, S v Z, demonstrates the exact curiosity innate to human beings. “S” faces a distorted mirror image of itself, represented as “Z”, connected by “v”, the “symbol in mathematical logic for an ‘inclusive or.’” Becker explains that Auerbach is “asking us to consider not just distortion, but also ideas of rotation, parity, and duality in these two forms. The “S” and “Z” reference the two directions of the helix—a shape deeply embedded in our world.”

Not only embedded in our world, but embedded in our DNA, is that longing for explanation. We crave answers to the Universe’s most perplexing questions, but in our pursuit, Auerbach questions the boundaries of our intellect and how much our gift can truly give us.

Tauba Auerbach. “Extended Object (detail)” (2018). Private collection, New York. © Tauba Auerbach. Photo: Steven Probert. Courtesy of the artist and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.

When did you first discover Tauba Auerbach’s work? What was your first impression and how has that now changed after curating S v Z?

JB: I think that the first time I saw Tauba’s work was at Jack Hanley Gallery in San Francisco. I was living around the corner at the time - this must have been around 2007, and Tauba had a solo show of language-based paintings that I was very interested in. This is also right when I started working at SFMOMA, and we had just acquired Tauba’s Alphabetized Bible, which is on view in S v Z. In 2008 SFMOMA presented Tauba with the SECA Art Award and we presented a gallery dedicated to their work, and in 2012 I included Tauba’s immersive, room-scale 50/50 Floor in the exhibition Field Conditions. My first impression has continued to ring true – that this is an artist who is deeply inquisitive, technically proficient in an array of materials and methods, and quite brilliant in how they began and continue to approach complex conditions of logic and geometry and the structures that define our world. Looking at the breadth of the work on view in the exhibition is really a testament to their exhaustive vision that is rendered beautifully in a vast range of media.

The title is an S and a distorted, mirrored version of itself. How might this exhibition present a distorted mirrored image of the viewers/their world?

JB: Each artwork of Tauba’s is the result of both research and questioning why certain established conditions are accepted and where they might begin to fray. This might be in the process of creating the work, or in what the work depicts directly, or what it alludes to. In S v Z, there are projects that look at uncertain theories in physics, or visualize movement and fluid dynamics, or explore material properties of glass and paint and even soap, or test the edges of legibility, or challenge notions of symmetry. The title can actually be read as “S and/or Z,” as the “v” is the symbol in mathematical logic for an “inclusive or.” Tauba is asking us to consider not just distortion, but also ideas of rotation, parity, and duality in these two forms. The S and Z reference the two directions of the helix – a shape deeply embedded in our world.

Tauba Auerbach. “Pilot Wave Induction III (still)” (2018). © Tauba Auerbach. Courtesy the artist and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.

This show was delayed due to the pandemic. Were there any upsides to this delay? How so?

JB: The fact that it is still happening! We are truly fortunate that despite the exhibition being delayed, it was able to remain in its complete state. The additional time also allowed us to include another work made this year, from a new series of paintings where Tauba is exploring mapping and ideas of warped spatiality and locality that feel very connected to our current moment. A unique product of the delay is that the catalogue for the show, which Tauba designed with graphic designer David Reinfurt, came out last year when the exhibition had been scheduled and has been in bookstores this whole time. Revisiting the finished publication after an additional year and a half of deepening exploration of Tauba’s practice is interesting – there are new discoveries to be found in both the images and the essays.

With such a breadth of work and a wide array of mediums, what defined the selection criteria?

JB: This is Tauba’s first survey exhibition, so we set out first to present the entirety of their practice. Included is a multitude of works, from the artist’s early gouache and ink drawings that deal with language and letterforms, to trompe l’oeil paintings that explore a push and pull between two and three dimensions, photographs that capture electromagnetic noise from the Big Bang, weavings in canvas and glass that create complex interlocking structures, and video that interprets unresolved theories in physics. Throughout the exhibition are books, typefaces, pins and other elements from Tauba’s Diagonal Press publishing imprint, where works are created in indefinite editions. Tauba has also conceived a site-specific mural, painted in collaboration with New Bohemia Signs, that is a major element in the exhibition and builds on the marbled dazzle camouflage that they painted on the John J. Harvey fireboat in New York in 2019. We will also present the Auerglass Organ, a two-person pump collaborative organ designed by Tauba and the musician Glasser (Cameron Mesirow), which will be performed during the run of the exhibition.

Tauba Auerbach. “Mudra Z” (2016). © Tauba Auerbach; Photo: Steven Probert. Courtesy of Diagonal Press, the artist and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.

Describe what you learned about yourself in collaborating with Tauba on this curation and show?

JB: My co-curator Jenny Gheith and I have been continually inspired by the expansiveness of Tauba’s vision. As curators of Architecture + Design and Painting +Sculpture, we each have known that Tauba’s interests touch on topics close to our own research and yet they have continued to expose us to worlds beyond. Tauba is a continual student of ideas, craft and technique and I’ve always been drawn to this kind of insatiable curiosity and exploration. It’s been exciting to spend so much time with the work, and we are thrilled to be able to bring the exhibition to the museum and to a widening audience so it can continue to inspire.

How might you think that the exhibition allows us to cope with our current realities?

JB: Tauba’s work wrestles with the notion that there exist absolutes within the structures in our universe, at scales both cosmic and intricate. There is an immense incalculability and a limit to our knowledge of these structures and the ways we make sense of them, from theories in physics to mathematical and platonic concepts. Tauba is driven to explore the edges of these far-reaching, even existential, ideas and how the rules that we generally accept might be unraveled or challenged. The result of this research is also an aesthetic inquiry, and the materials, shapes, and compositions of Tauba’s work are provocative and exquisite, and even mesmerizing.