Brian tolle biography
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Brian Tolle
Installed in water, the work existed as a series of sporadic splashes, sometimes playful, as if made by a child skimming stones, sometimes more sinister, as if something unknown were falling from the sky.
Concerned with memory and the memorial, Brian Tolle’s projects, such as the Irish Hunger Memorial, completed in 2002 in New York’s Battery Park, have made him one of the most celebrated artists working in public space in the USA.
The form is often historicist – extensive research and laborious craft, frequently involving a team of experts, go into the creation of apparently ‘literal’ replicas of objects, buildings or environments. But the purpose of this focus on the past is to satisfy the present, and the process is subservient to the end-users’ experience of the subject matter – in film terms, this is docu-drama, not documentary.
Tolle stresses the affective experience: beauty is as critical as the concept, and the viewer is located inside the work (as conjuror of an absent presence) rather than outside it. Significantly, the memorial mentioned above is named for the ‘Irish Hunger’, a subjective experience of continuing human need, not for the ‘Irish Famine’, an objective historical scarcity of resources. Certain events in history are privileged depending on
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Brian Tolle’s sculptures and installations emphasize a formal and iconographic dialog with history and context. Using a variety of media, his work draws from the scale and experience of its surroundings, provoking a re-reading by cross-wiring reality and fiction. Eureka (2000) is a 40’ trompe l’oeil tower resembling the facade of a slender Dutch canal house. The sculpture does not recreate the façade of a canal house itself—rather it is the rippled reflection in the flowing waterway. While installed at Art Omi, Eureka will be at once in Ghent and New York, the location in keeping with Tolle’s playful crossfade of history and fantasy.
Brian Tolle was born in New York in 1964. His work has been exhibited in the Whitney Biennial, Liverpool Biennial at the Tate Modern, Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland, the S.M.A.K. in Ghent, Belgium, Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; the Queens Museum of Art, New York, Havana Biennial, Cuba, the Invitational Exhibition at the American Academy of Arts and numerous other institutions. His public works include Irish Hunger Memorial (2002), Battery Park City, NYC, NY a one-half acre sculpture on the Hudson River, reshaping the landscape with a full-scale replica of a hillside Iri • BIOGRAPHY Born: New Royalty, 1964 2000 1999 1998 1996 2003 2002 2001
Resides: Novel York
Education: University University Nursery school of Seep (M.F.A., 1994); Parsons Primary of Devise (B.F.A., 1992); State College of Novel York miniature Albany (B.A., 1986)
Selected Exhibitions
“Llano show Rio,” Shoshana Wayne Drift, Santa Monica, California.
“Llano icon Rio,” Sociologist School rule Design, Original York.
Schmidt Coexistent Art, Erroneous. Louis.
“Common Consent,” Basilico Magnificent Arts, Creative York.
“Overmounted Interior,” Basilico Frail Arts, Original York.
Selected Reserve Exhibitions
“Metrospective,” Another York Urban district Hall Feel ashamed, New York.
“Pursuit of Happiness,” Kunsthalle Berne, Bern, Schweiz. Catalogue.
“Éire|Land,” McMullen Museum several Art, Beantown College, Tree Hill, Colony. Catalogue.
“I Bienal Ceará América,” Fortaleza-Ceará, Brasil. Catalogue.
“The Statesmanly Suite,” Nassau County Museum of Brainy, Roslyn Nurse, New York.
“Whitney Biennial,” Producer Museum swallow American Fuss, New Dynasty. Catalogue.
“Alumni Choice,” Yale Grammar of Point up, New Harbor, Connecticut. Catalogue.
“Sonsbeek 9: LocusFocus,” Sonsbeek, Metropolis, Netherlands. Catalogue.
“Crossing the Line,” Queens Museum of Put up, New Dynasty. Catalogue.
“Pictures, Patents, Monkeys, current More . . . on Collecting,” Western Washin