THE ARTIST’S VOICE SINCE 1981 BOMBSITE Tunga
by Simon Lane BOMB 78/Winter 2002, ART
Tunga, True Rouge, 1998, installation view, dimensions variable. All images courtesy of Luhring Augustine.
The magician never gives away his secrets. Tunga is content to explain his, yet the sum of these secrets remains a mystery. Such a paradox—the in/explicable—is characteristic, for Tunga’s work abounds in both harmony and discord. Each force brought into play is noted as much by default as it is by its own empirical reality: the transparent invites the opaque, the positive invites the negative, and chaos can only function with order knocking on the door. Tunga is chance in motion, convinced that if he moves halfway to resolve the conditions he has invented for himself, the rest will materialize within the act itself. Through that assertion he proves that chance can be used to a point beyond which it can use you. The fact that the latter is continuously to his advantage is a measure of the man, of his wit, dexterity, and vision. In recent years, Tunga has become increasingly interested in creating what Kurt Schwitters called the gesamtkunstwerke, the total work of art, a microcosm or universe—which is to say that he mixes media of all types at the service of ideas that are both direct and unequivocal, the proof that traditional categories and boundaries—the bondage of a conservative age—can, indeed must, be erased to bring about a catharsis. In controlling aesthetic concerns at will, he never allows appearances to remain appearances but always invests them with purpose. In so doing, he stretches the limits of perception, demanding of the viewer an intellectual engagement that never seems at odds with the purely sensual enjoyment of his art. Such a balancing act requires risk, of which he is wholly aware. Indeed, a sense of danger is a prerequisite for the work, bringing it to