Keith Tyson

Keith Tyson
Birth name	Keith Thomas Bower
Born	(1969-08-23) August 23, 1969 Ulverston, Lancashire
Nationality	British
Field	Painting, Drawing, Installation art
Awards	Turner Prize, 2002

Keith Tyson (born August 23, 1969) born Keith Thomas Bower^[1] is a British artist. In 2002, he was the winner of the Turner Prize. His work is concerned with an interest in generative systems, and an embrace of the complexity and interconnectedness of existence.^[1] Tyson works in a wide range of media, including painting, drawing and installation.

Early life

Bower moved to Dalton-in-Furness when he was four, adopting his stepfather's Christian name Tyson. He showed an interest in and talent for art at an early age, having been inspired by his "very creative and enthusiastic" primary school art teacher.^[2] However he left school at the age of 15 without qualifications, and took employment as a fitter and turner with VSEL (Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering Ltd., now BAE Systems) in Barrow-in-Furness. ^{[citation needed]}

In 1989, he began an art foundation course at the Carlisle College of Art, and the following year he moved south to take up a place on experimental Alternative Practice degree at The Faculty of Arts and Architecture, University of Brighton (1990–1993).

Career

The Artmachine Years: 1991 - 1999

During the 1990s, Tyson’s practice was dominated by the Artmachine, which was the first means through which Tyson explored his ongoing interest in randomness, causality, and the question of how things come into being. The Artmachine was a method Tyson developed which used a combination of computer programmes, flow charts and books in order to generate chance combinations of words and ideas, which were then realised in practice as artworks in a wide range of media.

The results of the Artmachine became the basis of Tyson’s earliest exhibited artworks; indeed, his first solo exhibition in 1996 at Anthony Reynolds Gallery in London was entitled From the Artmachine.

The Artmachine Iterations, as these works became known, established Tyson’s reputation in the UK and internationally as an original artist and thinker, and by 1999 he had mounted solo exhibitions in London, New York, Paris and Zürich, as well as contributed to group shows throughout Europe, North America and Australia.

From The Artmachine to the Turner Prize: 1999 - 2002

From 1999, Tyson’s interests practice turned from the Artmachine towards an artistic approach which explored the same thematic terrain, but this time directly by his own hand. The first such body of work was entitled Drawing and Thinking. Many of these works were installed in the international exhibition in the 2001 Venice Biennale, and contributed substantially to Tyson’s winning the Turner Prize the following year.

The exhibition in Venice included one of Tyson’s most celebrated artworks, The Thinker (After Rodin). The large hexagonal monolithic black structure, which intentionally echoed the structure seen at the beginning of the Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey, hummed with the banks of computers concealed inside.

In 2002, Tyson mounted what might be considered his breakthrough solo museum show, Supercollider at South London Gallery and then the Kunsthalle Zürich in Switzerland. The name of the exhibition, derived from the popular name for the CERN particle accelerator in Geneva, indicated the significance of scientific ways of seeing and thinking about the world to Tyson’s art at this time.

In December 2002, Tyson was awarded the British visual arts award, the Turner Prize. The other shortlisted artists that year were Fiona Banner, Liam Gillick and Catherine Yass. The Turner Prize was notorious that year not so much for the controversial nature of the work of the shortlisted artists as in previous years, but because of the comments of then Culture Minister Kim Howells. His comments that the Turner Prize exhibition at Tate Britain consisted of "cold, mechanical, conceptual bullshit" were greeted with both approval and criticism in the media.

Recent Work

Tyson’s first exhibition in the UK after winning the Turner Prize was Geno/Pheno Paintings in London’s Haunch of Venison Gallery in 2004. The title and concept of the series of diptychs which constitute this body of work were borrowed from biological science; each pair of artworks featured a genotype work (a generative system, formula or situation), and a phenotype (one possible expression, manifestation or consequence of the genotype). That same year in Galerie Judin in Zürich, Tyson mounted an exhibition of The Terrible Weight of History, which featured The History Paintings, which is one of the clearest and most minimal artistic expressions of Tyson’s interest in unpredictability and its representation, and his questioning of how works of art are originated.

In 2005, Tyson was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from the University of Brighton. The following year, Tyson first exhibited his most monumental and ambitious work to date, Large Field Array, in the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, which then travelled to the De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art in the Netherlands and The Pace Gallery in New York. His most recent exhibition in London was in December 2007, when Tyson showed at Haunch of Venison Ten Years of Studio Paintings, 1997 - 2007. Tyson has referred to these drawings as:

“	a kind of journal…like Van Gogh’s letters.	”

The drawings Tyson created on his studio wall collectively act like a kind of sketchbook for the paintings and the larger multimedia installations that have characterized Tyson’s later career. In 2009 Tyson's work was shown at the Hayward Gallery as part of the group exhibition "Walking in My Mind". This is to be followed by a solo exhibition at Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art, entitled "Cloud Choreography and Other Emergent Systems", opening in mid September. Set up as an exploration of Tyson’s practice, rather than as a mid-career survey, the exhibition will focus on the systems and processes that inform the creation of his work.

Artworks

The Artmachine Iterations

Only a fraction of the instructions issued from the Artmachine were realised as artworks (the Artmachine generated around 12,000 proposals which are still unmade^[3]), but many of the playful and inventive mixed media works that were created include a twenty-four foot painting made from bathroom sealant, and a painting of a hangman’s noose using toothpaste and music CDs.

History Paintings

Each of the paintings in this series consists of 49 identical strips, coloured with red, green or black aluminium powder, depending on what the roulette wheel instructed Tyson to paint. Three large-scale works are named after cities with famous casinos, together with momentous years of social upheaval in their history (e.g. St Petersburg 1905), while 12 smaller calendar works are named after locations of casinos together with a month of the year.

Large Field Array

Described by Walter Robinson as ‘nothing less than a complete Pop cosmology,’^[4] Large Field Array comprises 300 modular units, most formed from into implied 2-foot cubes; the cubes are arranged into a grid occupying both the floor and walls of a gallery when installed. Each highly crafted cubic sculpture represents a unique yet highly recognizable feature of the world, from popular culture to natural history. Sculptures as diverse as a representation of American billionaire Donald Trump’s wedding cake, a chimney with a bird on top of it with a satellite dish, and a chair made of skeletons, were all constructed and arranged. The installation invited the viewer/participant to negotiate his or her own path through a seemingly random assortment of images and ideas, echoing the mental processes which create free associations between disparate phenomena which so fascinate Tyson.

The Nature Paintings (2005–2008)

A mixture of paints, pigments and chemicals are allowed to interact in specific ways upon an acid primed aluminium panel. The combined processes of gravity, chemical reaction, temperature, hydrophobia and evaporation simultaneously conspire to create surfaces reminiscent of a wide range of natural forms and landscapes. In this respect, the paintings seem to be depict nature, but they are also created by nature as well.

Large Wall Drawings (1997–2007)

Collectively these works on paper represent Keith Tyson’s sketchbook or journal. Each ‘Wall Drawing’ is made on a sheet of paper measuring 158 cm x 126 cm, the same dimensions as a small wall in Tyson’s original studio where he used to draw-up notes. Over the years these sheets have recorded his ideas, emotional tone and mood, visits people made to the studio, world events and even economic fluctuations. They are often exhibited in large non-chronological grids to form solid walls of diverse images, and text.

Critical Response: For and Against

For

The judging panel of the 2002 Turner Prize, which awarded the £20,000 prize to Tyson, consisted of the critic Michael Archer, then Director of the Hayward Gallery, Susan Ferleger Brades, director of the Musée National d'Art Moderne, at the Centre Georges Pompidou Alfred Pacquement, and collector Greville Worthington. They awarded the prize to Tyson, as they “admired the way in which his work embraces the poetic, the logical, the humorous and the fantastical and draws connections between them,” and praised “the strong visual energy of his work across a wide range of media.”^[5]

In the press, The Times art critic Rachel Campbell-Johnston agreed that “In a series of one-man and group exhibitions, his paintings and puzzles, sculptures and contraptions - contemporary successors to Duchamp’s chance-based works - have delighted and tantalised an tangled into knots the minds of viewers...Tyson’s works are like experiments, made not to prove facts but to promote creativity. This is why he was the right winner this year.”^[6]

Similarly, the critic Alex Farquharson commended the conceptual reach of Tyson’s Supercollider exhibition at the South London Gallery in 2002 claiming of the works assembled, 'Together they present the tragi-comedy of trying to make sense of life, whatever interpretative system is used, including the fluid and pluralistic medium of contemporary art.'^[7]

Against

Some art critics have been sceptical of the claim that Tyson’s work derives from and appeals to big and difficult ideas, and have seen his work as more kitsch than complex. Writing about Large Field Array in Art in America, Matthew Guy Nichols wrote: “These associations proliferate in many directions at once, creating an endless chain of signification that theoretically links all the units in the grid and ultimately asserts that everything in the universe in somehow connected. While this possibility is interesting to ponder...Large Field Array can also seem more trite than profound. This may be due to the extremely high production values and hyper-realism of the sculptures, which would make more visual sense in the context of certain theme parks. Indeed, I found myself thinking that Walt Disney had already addressed these issues in his Magic Kingdom, to the tune of ‘It’s a small world after all.’”^[8]

Some of Tyson’s more hostile critics, by contrast, have acknowledged and respected the intellectual rigour of Tyson’s work, but have felt that he is too dispassionate and clinical an artist. Adrian Searle has written that, “Tyson’s conceptually inventive and quirky games - like watching Douglas Adams meet Marcel Duchamp over chess - leave me a bit cold. I find the profligacy of his art wearying.”^[9] Michael Glover, also writing about Tyson’s Turner Prize victory, agreed that, “Tyson has a big brain and lots of loudly voiced ideas about the ‘global totality of knowledge and language’ but, taken together, the work seems emotionally thin, more the tricksy, adroit antics of some brainbox than art of any memorable substance.”^[10]

Personal life

In his personal life, Keith Tyson has admitted to having experienced a gambling addiction^[11] at various times during his adult life, which he confronted just before he won the Turner Prize in 2002.^{[citation needed]}

His favourite gambling method was roulette, which he described as:

“	the full Dostoevsky - it’s your life in a spin. Once you get in the flow of that, it’s almost like a religious experience.[12]	”

The roulette table is one of the inspirations behind his acclaimed History Paintings series, and other motifs from gambling and betting recur throughout his work.

The University of Brighton awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Letters in summer 2005.

References

Further reading

Solo and Group Exhibition Catalogues

• Cloud Choreography and Other Emergent Systems, Parasol Unit foundation for contemporary art, London, 2009
• Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art, Barbican Art Gallery, London, 2008
• Keith Tyson, Studio Wall Drawings 1997–2007, Haunch of Venison, London, 2007
• Keith Tyson, Large Field Array, Louisiana Museum, Denmark, 2006
• How to Improve the World: 60 Years of British Art, Hayward Gallery, London, 2006
• Keith Tyson, Geno Pheno, PaceWildenstein, New York/Haunch of Venison, London, 2005
• Keith Tyson, History Paintings, 2005
• Dionysiac, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2005
• Head to Hand, Drawings by Keith Tyson, Thea Westreich & Ethan Wagner, New York, 2002
• Keith Tyson, Kunsthalle Zürich, Switzerland, 2002
• Supercollider, South London Gallery, London, 2002
• Turner Prize Exhibition, Tate Britain, London, 2002
• Public Affairs, Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland, 2002
• Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis, Tate Modern, London, 2000
• Over the Edges, SMAK-Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Gent, 2000
• Dream Machines, Hayward Gallery, London, 2000

Secondary Works

• Mark Rappolt, 'Life, the Universe and Everything', Art Review, February 2007
• Rachel Withers, ‘Keith Tyson’, Artforum, March 2005
• Marcus Verhagen, 'Keith Tyson', Art Monthly, December 2004 - January 2005
• Michael Archer, 'Primordial Soups', Parkett 71, 2004
• Ethan Wagner and Keith Tyson, 'A Conversation', Parkett 71, 2004
• Hans Rudolph Reust, 'Fabulous Art', Parkett 71, 2004
• Tony Barrell, ‘Rising to the Equation’, Sunday Times Magazine, 30 November 2003
• Virginia Button, The Turner Prize: Twenty Years, Tate Publishing, 2003
• Matthew Collings, Art Crazy Nation: The Post Blimey Art World, 21 Publishing Ltd, 2001
• Louisa Buck, Moving Targets 2, A Users Guide to British Art Now, Tate Publishing, London, 2000

Representing Galleries

• The Pace Gallery, New York
• Galerie Vallois, Paris

External links

• Keith Tyson official website
• Keith Tyson lecture at the Tate
• Keith Tyson at The Pace Gallery
• Keith Tyson at Galerie Vallois Paris
• Keith Tyson at ARNDT Berlin
• Keith Tyson interview
• [http://www.tulliehouse.co.uk/pages.asp?type=M&url=399_Future+Exhibitions&lvl=,399, Keith Tyson at Tullie House]

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Persondata
Name	Tyson, Keith
Alternative names
Short description	British artist
Date of birth	23 August 1969
Place of birth	Ulverston in Lancashire
Date of death
Place of death