exhibition catalog
6.25 x 5.5" (folds out to 6.25 x 22.5")
two sided, cover stock
biography and essay by Thomas Girst
full color images
"Never trust the artist, trust the tale," D.H. Lawrence supposedly once said. Considering that nowadays the exact same quote is often attributed to both Henry James and T.S. Eliot, Lawrence certainly had a point there. In any case, it is a statement that artist Tim Thyzel might readily agree with. Though forever willing to discuss his work, it's his dry humor which subtly adds layer upon layer of meaning instead of explaining things away.

On "Tiled," his recent set of bathroom sculptures, the artist is as articulate, always making sure, however, that the narrative can be found within the work itself rather than outside of it. Even knowledge of anecdotal evidence - like the unused washcloth given to Tim by his mother, which has found its appropriate application dangling from one of the sculptures - might not be of much help. Thyzel himself refers to each member of his new ensemble as a "Bathroom Brancusi," echoing the latter's formal vocabulary and even providing an "Endless Column" of toilet bowls, initially conceived in 1993. Decades before, Louise Norton had dubbed art history's first signed sanitary object - no other than Marcel Duchamp's urinal "Fountain" - to be the "Buddha of the Bathroom." The same year, incidentally, in which artists Morton Schamberg and Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven conspired to declare a mounted plumbing trap to be a sculpture entitled "God."
Yet where does that leave us? In Thyzel's universe, it is he who plays creator. And almost by default, the artist makes sure to relieve his sculptures of the burden of too much art-historical connoisseurship. Apparently, and quite literally, there's only one weight left to carry - an odd rectangular bathroom fixture placed on the shoulders of an infinitely smiling yellow rubber ducky striking the pose of a latter-day Atlas. Neither decontextualized ready-mades nor mystically charged objets trouves, Thyzels sculptures are simply this: reality gone berserk. Whereas earlier projects such as "Street Works" were set loose on us in the public sphere, the artist now works wonders in the bathroom. A space of unresolved paradoxes, to be sure, clashing germ-free architecture with the daily production of human waste. A private and last resort of undisturbed contemplation, it is here where, at least in Thyzel's tiled world, Rodin's "Thinker" would hold court amidst skin flakes, dead hair and whatnot.
Every single one of Thyzel's tile sculptures is made of 'apocryphal' clay, dead material acquiring a life of its own through the reshaping of the artist. At first glance they appear to be outcasts, yet in the bigger context of Thyzel's oeuvre, his new sculptures manage to stand their ground. Compared to his earlier works made of concrete, their polished Sunday-dress elegance leaves us flabbergasted until we realize the tiles to be their shining suits of armor, enabling them to hold the fort. It is the strength of Thyzel's new sculptures that despite their potential for melancholy, each and everyone of them retains a sense of aloof playfulness, allowing for more fun than their counterparts in the real world could ever experience within the stale confines of a bathroom or museum.

In the lighthearted accumulation of individual pieces within this special group constituting "Tiled," we sense Thyzel's permanent quest for a gesamtkunstwerk. Through the eager pursuit of the frolics of his own as well as his untiring determination, the highly skilled artist offers the viewer a child-like glance on an intricate display of sculptures. In his demeanor Thyzel is not at all unlike the mailman Ferdinand Cheval (1836-1924), who in his 43rd year set out to build the imagined palaces of his childhood. After chancing upon a curiously shaped stone on his way to work, Cheval, working day and night for the next two decades, created what came to be known as his giant Palais Ideal, entirely made of pebbles. It is this same energy that also drives Thyzel.

- Thomas Girst, NYC 2001