Tauba Auerbach

The 50/50 in the title refers to the 50 per cent spread of white and black forms depicted in the three images. Each image shows a different pattern in which the repeat slips again and again to form new patterns. In an extensive series of drawings and paintings, reproduced in a book also entitled 50/50, Tauba Auerbach (*1981 San Francisco, US) explores the geometric possibilities of parity relationships between white and black shapes. Auerbach hijacks semantic structures, written language, digital codes and visual symbols and transforms them into abstract structures and weave-like patterns. The EPO's three images are representative of this artistic oeuvre. Auerbach's works function at various levels of perception, thus recalling the op art investigations of such artists as Bridget Riley, who also has a work in the EPO collection. In Auerbach's images, too, illusions of spatial depth and flatness alternate in the same way as the perception of purely ornamental structures and the desire to decipher their meaning.